The Supreme Court has chided the Allahabad High Court and its Lucknow bench for conducting parallel proceedings in a single case and hoped "judicial enthusiasm should not obliterate the profound responsibility that is expected from the Judges."
A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Mishra also faulted the two-judge Lucknow bench for passing a judgement overruling another two-bench judgement which it said was contrary to established judicial norms as ideally such a conflicting view should have been referred to a larger bench.
According to the apex court, judicial discipline commands in such a situation when there is disagreement to refer the matter to a larger bench.
"Instead of doing that, the division bench at Lucknow took the burden on themselves to decide the case. There are two decisions by two division benches from the same high court.
"We express our concern about the deviation from the judicial decorum and discipline by both the benches and expect that in future, they shall be appositely guided by the conceptual eventuality of such discipline as laid down by this court from time to time.
"We have said so with the fond hope that judicial enthusiasm should not obliterate the profound responsibility that is expected from the judges," the bench said.
The apex court made the remarks while dealing with a bunch of appeals filed by employees and the Uttar Pradesh government challenging conflicting judgements of the Allahabad High Court and its Lucknow bench relating to validity of Section 3(7) of the 1994 Act and Rule 8A of the 1991 Rules of UP Government Servants Seniority Rules, 1991.
