BENGALURU: Taking note of the phenomenon of indisciplined, irrelevant, unnecessary and unrelated pleadings, commonly seen whenever a party-in-person appears either as petitioner or respondent for their own cases, the Karnataka High Court said they should not be granted permission to argue in court in-person.
The court said the pleadings are barely up to the mark, and the party-in-persons are unable to draft their cases properly. The court said it is desirable that while assessing the competency to appear as party-in-person by the committee, their capacity to plead and draft the case properly as per the law of pleadings, should be applied as one of the criteria.
A division bench of Chief Justice NV Anjaria and Justice KV Aravind passed the order while dismissing a pil filed by Mohamed Ikbal, a resident, who filed the petition on his own and argued without a lawyer’s assistance.
“It needs to be observed that the petition is characterised by wayward pleadings made by the party-in-person.
Apparently drafted by the petitioner-party-in-person, the pleadings contain long statements and facts which are extra in nature and not properly related to the controversy. The pleadings are made cumbersome to cull out the crux of the controversy. The court undertook that exercise since party-in-person appeared,” the court observed.