Do not terrorise judges with voluminous petitions: SC

Do not terrorise judges with voluminous petitions: SC

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:7.8.2021

The Supreme Court on Friday sent out a loud message to all client-impressing advocates: “Do not file voluminous petitions to terrorise the judges and risk getting the hearing adjourned”.

Finding it difficult to go through a 51-volume appeals, each running to over 100 pages, filed by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation against a Bombay high court judgment rejecting its petition challenging the Telecom Regulatory Authority’s New Tariff Order (NTO 2.0), a bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Surya Kant said, “The Supreme Court engaged trucks to carry these volumes of appeals to judges’ residences to enable them read it and get prepared with the matter.”

“You cannot terrorise us by filing volumes and volumes of appeals. In this case, there are 51 volumes in one petition. You sit together and file a single short convenient volume giving a synopsis of the issue to be adjudicated,” the bench told senior advocates Darius Khambatta, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Gopal Jain and Amit Sibal, who appeared for the appellants.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta and senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, with advocate Sanjay Kapur for TRAI, said that it is a short issue and TRAI will file a two-page synopsis for the judges’ convenience. But, the CJI-led bench said, “You wait. Let them satisfy us with the merits of their appeal.”

The bench ordered, “We direct senior counsel appearing for the petitioners in all the matters to make a convenience volume of all the documents, in consultation with senior counsel for the respondents well in advance and circulate the same.” The bench adjourned the hearing to August 18.

IBF, an umbrella organisation for TV broadcasters, has challenged a Bombay HC judgment upholding TRAI’s NTO 2.0, which set a cap of ₹12 from the existing ₹19 on pay channel prices.

It was to ensure that an effective a-la-carte choice was available to distributors without being handicapped by perverse pricing of bouquets by broadcasters at wholesale level, it said.

TRAI justified its move as one in “public interest”.

It had raised concerns over broadcasters creating bouquets with one or two leading channels and filling it with other less popular channels or even free-to-air channels, making it difficult for consumers to choose channels.

Full report on www.toi.in