Reasons for judgment must: SC

Reasons for judgment must: SC

21 sep 2010

The Supreme Court has now put it in black and white on why recording reasons while giving a judgment is important and crucial for “sustaining the litigants’ faith in the justice delivery system”.

Outlining as many as 15 points, the court held the reasons as an “indispensable” component of a decision-making process by not just judicial but even quasi-judicial and administrative bodies.

Insisting that reasons must be part of every judgment, the SC asserted that recording reasons is “a requirement for both judicial accountability and transparency”.

Recording of reasons operates as a valid restraint on any possible arbitrary exercise of judicial and quasi-judicial or even administrative power, observed the court. It added that reasoned judgment reassures that discretion has been exercised without any extraneous considerations.

It emphasised that reasons accompanying decisions must be cogent, clear and succinct. “A pretence of reasons or rubber-stamp reasons is not to be equated with a valid decision-making process,” it said in a case perusing two appeals filed by a builder and another by the Corporation Bank.

Both had questioned an order of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Reasons-for-judgment-must--SC/684934