Delhi High Court revises break timings after SC's ‘taking breaks unnecessarily’ remark - Check new timetable

The Delhi High Court has revised the timings of lunch breaks and court sittings, a day after the Supreme Court said high court judges take “unnecessary” breaks too often.

In a notice dated May 14, the Delhi High Court declared that the first half of the court sitting time will begin from 10:30 am and end at 1:30 pm.

The lunch break will subsequently begin from 1:30 pm and go on till 2:30 pm. Thereafter, the court will resume its sitting from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm.

Till now, the court sitting timings were from 10.30 am to 1.15 pm and from 2.15 pm to 4.30 pm whereas they broke for lunch at around 1.15 pm till 2.15 pm.

Additionally, the Delhi HC also said the fourth Saturday of every month will be a working day for the registry.

“It has further been resolved that the Fourth Saturday of every month, which is currently observed as a holiday for the Registry, shall henceforth be a working day for the Registry,” the notice read.

Supreme Court says some HC judges take too many breaks

High court judges taking breaks "unnecessarily" and too often found a mention in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, which called for their performance audits.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh said the top court was receiving several complaints against high court judges, and it was high time to assess the expenditure on them vis-a-vis their output.

"There are some judges who work very hard, but at the same time, there are judges who are unnecessarily taking coffee breaks; this break or that break. What is for lunch hour? We are hearing a lot of complaints about the high court judges. This is a larger issue which needs to be looked into. What is the performance of the high court judges? How much we are spending and what is the output? It's high time we do a performance audit," Justice Kant said.

The judge's remark came on the plea of four persons, who moved the top court claiming that the Jharkhand High Court reserved its order on the criminal appeal against conviction and life sentence in 2022, but the judgment was not pronounced.

Advocate Fauzia Shakil, appearing for them, said that after the top court's nudge in the matter, the high court on May 5 and 6 pronounced the verdicts in their cases. Three of the four were acquitted, while the remaining resulted in a split verdict. The matter was referred to the High Court's Chief Justice, and he was granted bail.

This morning, Shakil pointed out that despite the high court's pronouncement of the verdicts a week ago, the three acquitted persons were not released from jail, and the high court did not mention the date of reserving the orders in the judgments.

Taking exception, the bench asked the Jharkhand government counsel to immediately release them before the lunch break and posted the matter post 2 pm.