All Work and Less Play: Should This Be the Judiciary's Way?

When read on the face of it, this seems to be the ideal rubric for our judiciary to function with increased efficiency.

But, while clamping down on the holidaying courts sounds like the opportune prescription for overcoming judicial delays, such a line of thinking is at best parochial.

While a recent comment by a senior economic advisor to the Prime Minister sparked controversy and well-placed outrage from the members of the judiciary, censuring court “vacations” is in no way a recent phenomenon. 

The Indian courts have close to 100 days off, and this has drawn criticism, wonder, and even disappointment from all quarters – ironically,  quarters largely distant from the workings of the judiciary.

No wonder, then, that in the clamouring around judicial reforms, the need to exterminate court vacations reverberates the loudest.

Should Professionals Ever Be Off Duty?

This isn’t surprising in the context of eminent public figures boasting of running on four hours of sleep or harping on 70-hour work weeks as the mantra to success.

But what is unfortunate is that as mounting health issues, both mental and physical, in youth due to stress and exertion, and premature burnout among professionals become glaring by the day, such precepts by flag bearers of success can put undue pressure on the working population.

Most Indian workers have an extremely skewed work-life balance, despite the official policy of an eight-hour work week.

The judiciary is no different. In spite of the “court vacations," a misnomer that we will try to dissect shortly, those working in the courts have notoriously long work days.

So before we try to assess the criticisms by diplomats about the limited working days of the judiciary, let’s go back to a 1942 speech by an advocate who championed an eight-hour workday for every working professional in India.

"It was both unjust and unwise to deny the workers a reasonable amount of spare time away from the factory, which was indispensable for the building up of citizenship and for the maintenance of his physical efficiency."

Dr BR Ambedkar, 1942

So, respite from the rigours of one’s duty is not just desirable but essential for sustaining the life and livelihood of any worker. The question then arises: do courts, the vanguards of the rights of citizens, wrongfully enjoy disproportionate time off?

Are Court Vacations Equivalent to Holidays From Work?

Misinformation and the begrudging attitudes around court vacations have a lot to do with the nomenclature.

‘Vacations’ are in fact the colonial term ascribed to days when the court does not function in full capacity, but in no way does it imply a break from work for all, especially judges.

To clarify to the economist with an example closer to his line of view, just as the Parliament sitting and legislating only three times a year does not mean the PMO or the Ministries are off duty for the rest of the year, courts not hearing cases in full capacity does not mean 100 odd days of free days for the judges! Yes, some days in these vacation periods are designed to be holidays for them, but anyone remotely connected with the court system will vouch for the fact that most of the ‘vacation’ days translate to work days for the judges. 

What happens during vacation days is that the number of hearings in the courts is reduced, but pressing matters continue to be heard by what is known as vacation benches, where judges take turns adjudicating on such matters.

In India, typically, a judge hears about 70–100 matters in a day. A bird's-eye view, or rather, a filmy-eyed view, will give the perception that the life cycle of a case hearing revolves around the dramatic tareekh pe tareekh flares by the lawyers and the occasional ‘order order’ refrains by the judge.

But here’s what truly happens.

As judges wrap up the hearings on the cause list and the roster for the cases for each day, they must thoroughly go over the facts of the matter, refer to exhaustive lists of precedents, cross-check on questions of law, draft the judgements for cases decided, and prepare for the next day’s hearing by again going over the case files and familiarising themselves with the facts of the cases because, especially in the appellate courts, arguments start on the merits of the case, so no time is spent on reiterating the facts.

So, beyond the 10 am to 4 pm work hours of the courts, which also frequently extend beyond hours, the work days of the judges, clerks, and lawyers, almost every day, spill over to 10–12 hours a day. 

Operating regularly beyond the reasonable limits of work hours and permitting a few days off to rejuvenate is perhaps not too much to ask for from the judiciary. But the question is, do they need 100 off days? The answer is that, effectively, they don’t get 100 days off to begin with.

The Indian Supreme Court alone sits for 190 days of the year; high courts typically hear matters for over 213 days, and lower courts work for even longer periods of time, the highest in comparison to other courts in the world.

But all our courts continue to conduct hearings, albeit in smaller numbers during the vacation periods, so effectively, members of the judiciary from time to time have to be in attendance.

Moreover, as public figures, they often have to attend civil functions for lectures, preside over several judicial committees and other expert groups, discharge administrative duties, and most importantly, continue with legal research on the cases pending before them.

When one assesses the broader picture of the work life cycle of a member of a judiciary, it becomes clear that no one actually enjoys the luxury of leisure beyond the reasonable right to rest guaranteed to any working professional. 

So, Do Courts Not Require Reforms in Their Vacation Structure to Deal With Delays?

Judicial delays plague Indian courts like no other. We currently face a burgeoning backlog, with over 3.1 crore cases pending before the Supreme Court alone.

So yes, judicial reforms to expedite case disposals are required. But reducing vacation days has a very feeble link to transforming the current chaos.

Even so, the reports by the courts and the law commission have grappled with the idea of reducing vacation days and expanding daily work hours to mitigate the backlog of cases.

In 2014, Justice RM Lodha proposed a roster-based vacation system for judges, which did not succeed due to the practical difficulty of aligning the schedules of judges, lawyers, and other members of the judiciary.

However, in 2013, the Supreme Court did reduce the number of vacation days from 10 weeks to seven weeks. So with vacation days suitably curtailed, we should have seen improved rates of case disposal.

However, that did not quite happen. The reason behind the failed attempt is that long vacations are probably the least important factor contributing to the pendency of cases. 

In a 2015 report by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, we see that overwhelming admission of cases, long-drawn and significant vacancies in positions of judges across courts, an indiscriminate number of special leave petitions, and often frivolous matters before higher courts largely retard the speedy disposal of cases.

Now, functional obstacles like the convoluted nature of our procedures and, more often than not, delays in compliance from investigating and enforcement bodies entail the loop of tareekh pe tareekh.

Court data shows that the government is the biggest litigator before the Indian courts, and every practitioner can testify that non-appearance from officials, loss of sought documents, and even change of personnel become sore thumbs in the progress of a case hearing. So, when the affiliates of the government criticise the court vacations, they could do better to be informed about the systemic delays caused by their functionaries to the functioning of the courts on regular days.

There is no denying that the judiciary, in its current scheme of functions, requires reforms to deal with pendencies better, but further reductions in vacation days than in its current form do little to help if the other factors remain unchanged. 

What one can reflect on is whether this championing of longer work hours for professionals across different fields of work undermines the true markers of efficiency and gets us mired in an unnecessary whataboutery.

(Yashaswini works as the Outreach Lead at Nyaaya, an initiative of Vidhi Centre For Legal Policy to provide simple, actionable, reliable, accessible legal information for all. She holds a law degree from SOAS, University of London. She tweets at @yashaswini_1010. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)