NEW DELHI: In a much significant verdict, the Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution bench on Thursday reversed its own 2018 verdict which had ordered automatic vacation of High Court's stay orders in 6 months if no hearing was conducted for that particular period.
"The Constitutional courts shouldn't fix the outer limit of disposal of cases for courts. The SC should not have directed automatic vacation of stays by HCs on expiry of 6 months, unless extended by the HC," a five-judge SC bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud and Justices A S Oka, J B Pardiwala, Pankaj Mithal and Manoj Misra said, in their verdict.
The Apex court's judgement carries much significance with respect to today's scenarios and contexts as in many cases the stay order got automatically vacated when HC ruled in favour of the accused or against it.
"The situation at the grassroots level courts is best known to the concerned courts and it is better left to those courts to decide which case should get priority for disposal," tue five-judge bench of the Top Court ruled.
The 2018 Asian Resurfacing verdict had directed that stay orders should be automatically vacated without requiring courts to provide reasons or consider the circumstances of each case.
The five-judge bench, passed the verdict today, after hearing a reference against the March 2018 judgment in Asian Resurfacing of Road Agency versus Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It had last year in December reserved its verdict.
"The constitutional courts should refrain from laying down time bound schedule for cases pending before any other courts," it had said today, in its verdict.
The original judgment of 2018 was delivered by a three-judge bench of the SC, headed by Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, and also comprising Justices Navin Sinha, and Rohinton Nariman. It had held and mandated automatic stay of vacation after six months unless in any exceptional case, such stay is extended.