Three judges of the Supreme Court drew inspiration from the early hours school children keep and began work earlier than usual on Friday. Justices U.U. Lalit, S. Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia started court at 9.30 a.m., a full hour before usual timings.
"If children can go to school at 7, we too can come to court at 9!" Justice Lalit explained to an appreciative crowd of lawyers in his courtroom.
The Supreme Court is known to have dismissed the clock on earlier occasions to get work done.
It has had midnight hearings. The court has worked late into the evenings. The pandemic has seen judges working through their lunch hours without pausing for rest and nourishment. Select Benches of the court hear urgent matters during vacations, silencing criticism about the number of days the court works in a year. Judges tend to hear as many as 40 cases on any given day. This involves reading the files of these cases the previous day besides working on and delivering judgments.
The gesture by the Justice Lalit Bench has caught the eye. It seemed to signal that the highest judiciary is open to flexible work hours as caseload rises.
An experiment
Justice Lalit, who is next in line to be the Chief Justice of India in August as per the seniority norm, explained that he preferred to start early and Friday was an experiment.
The tweak seemed to have paid dividends for the Bench, which finished as many as 20 cases by 10.30 a.m.
