JAYACHANDRAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The agony and helplessness of a court which is unable to promptly allot the time of the court to the litigant who needs it and deserves it haunts us always -particularly in this jurisdiction. The appellant needs, may be 3 hours of our time. We are not able to allot that time to him now. He may have to wait in the queue for long to get that small bit of time allotted to him. The request of the appellant/petitioner appears to be too legitimate. He prays that this appeal filed as early as in October, 2010 may be taken up for hearing. If that is not possible for this Court, the Learned Counsel prays that the application for suspension may be taken up for consideration and favourable disposal.

(2.) In the interests of transparency and accountability, we think that we owe an explanation to the Bar and the polity about the manner in which appeals are being taken up. As on date, we find that a total number of 652 criminal appeals are pending before the Division Bench of this Court as per the details shown below:

(3.) In addition to these appeals, 8 Death Sentence References are also pending. They certainly deserve to be taken up out of turn. We have already issued specific directions that records be kept ready and all these Death Sentence References be called on the date of reopening after Christmas vacation on 2.01.2012. We shall thereafter take up the Death Sentence References one after the other strictly in the order of pronouncement of the judgments.