The Supreme Court on Wednesday (November 12, 2025) said High Courts should put it out in the public domain, for the world to see, how long their judges take to pronounce judgments in pending cases.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a plea by four life convicts from Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities who complained that the Jharkhand High Court had not pronounced its verdicts in their criminal appeals even after reserving the cases for judgment two to three years ago.
The Bench had emphasised an urgent need to evaluate the performance of High Court judges in a previous hearing in September.
There are no specific timelines within which judges have to deliver judgments. The convention is that the judiciary ought to pronounce judgments within a reasonable time, from two to six months, of reserving cases.
However, judges, including in the apex court and the High Courts, have in practice reserved judgments for well over a year before delivering them. This may be due to the complexity of the question of law involved or the burden of work.
