Cure defect within two week or petition will be dismissed: SC to petitioners

With thousands of cases pending, the supreme court is drawing flak for its inefficiency in the disposal of pending cases. With the intention of weeding out defective petitions clogging the apex court registry, the Supreme Court Tuesday warned that it will dismiss 729 such pleas as the court was "unnecessarily burdened" with them. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said some of these 729 petitions have been lying in defect in the registry since 2010 and the petitioners have not cured the defects despite being repeatedly told by the registry.

"Some of these petitions are in defect since 2010. Nine years have gone by but the defects have not been cured," the court observed. When one of advocates said they were given four weeks time to cure the defects, the bench said it would dismiss the petitions if the defects were not cured within two weeks from Tuesday.

The bench, also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, gave one last opportunity to the parties to cure the defects in their petitions within two weeks and said that their failure to do so will result in dismissal of their petitions. "The Supreme Court is unnecessarily burdened with this. We will get rid of these petitions," the bench said.