Overview

• A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh directed High Courts to submit standardized data on matters reserved before January 31, 2025, capturing the dates of reservation, pronouncement, and upload.
• High Courts were told to modify their rules and judgment formats and to indicate whether a pronouncement contained only the operative part or the full judgment.
• Advocate Fauzia Shakil, acting as amicus, presented a tabular status report and was asked to file uniform, comparable data within two weeks after highlighting inconsistent formats used by different High Courts.
• The Court stressed it would not micromanage like a “school principal” but urged broad performance-evaluation guidelines and better self-management, noting different output expectations for criminal appeals versus bail matters.
• Warning that adjourning cases after hearings sends a demoralizing message, the Court reiterated the five-day rule from Ratilal on uploading reasons and sought assistance from Senior Advocate Ajit Kumar Sinha on implementation.