The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain a PIL seeking the implementation of a uniform judicial code in courts across the country on issues such as case registration, use of common judicial terms, phrases and abbreviations of legal terms.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Uday Umessh Lalit and Justice S Ravindra Bhat referred to an earlier meeting of the chief ministers and the chief justices of all high courts and said though the matter was discussed, all high courts refused to implement it.
"You know that there was a meeting between the chief ministers and the chief justices here a few years ago. Resolutions were made and some courts implemented it and other high courts refused to implement it," the bench said.
Referring to use of different judicial terms for the same thing, it said in Delhi, the term letter patent appeal (LPA) is used for an intra-court appeal and some other high court uses "first appeal".
"Can we agree on a page limit for a SLP (special leave petition) or for a list of dates that should not be more than four pages and synopsis should not be more than three paragraphs. Can we make a judicial order for this," it said, adding that it was very nice as the concept.
"You better withdraw this," the bench said, which led lawyer petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay to withdraw the PIL.
The PIL sought directions to the high courts to take appropriate steps to "adopt uniform procedure for case registration, use common judicial terms, phrases and abbreviations and make the court fee uniform".
The plea, alternatively, sought a direction to the Law Commission to prepare a report in consultation with the high courts in order to make judicial terms, phrases, abbreviations, case registration and court fee uniform.
The plea tried to inculcate a comparison of the phrases, terms and codes used in the benches of the Allahabad high court and found huge difference in terminology used by the two benches of the same high court.
"It is noteworthy that such differences in terminology can be seen in all the high courts. All the 25 high courts across the country have different usage of the phrases when it comes to identifying different cases," it said.
