CHENNAI: The special benches constituted by the Madras High Court Chief Justice Indira Banerjee on Saturday lacked much response from both litigants and their advocates during the first sitting.
As part of her initiative to dispose of criminal appeals pending before the Madras High Court for about 10 years, Chief Justice Indira Banerjee constituted a special sitting by three judges – Justices N Kirubakaran, MV Muralidharan and N Satish Kumar. The three judges sat at 10.30 am on Saturday. However, there was not much response to the initiative.
Most of the cases were adjourned as advocates were not present. Everything was over in about an hour.
Even though a circular on the constitution of special benches was issued by the High Court Registry as early as on December 29, the message seems to have not reached the lawyers in time, said Madras High Court Advocates Association president G Mohanakrishnan.
The circular on the setting up of special benches also requested advocates/litigants to furnish details of the left out 10 year-old pending criminal appeals, if any, to the Registrar (Judicial) of the High Court and sought their fullest co-operation to reduce pendency of old criminal appeals.