BCI should frame rules to regulate conduct of litigants appearing in person: Delhi High Court in plea seeking 'absurd reliefs'

The Delhi High Court recently observed that the Bar Council of India (BCI) should frame rules to regulate the conduct of litigants appearing in person to minimise the flow of frivolous litigation and to reduce the burden on courts [Naresh Sharma v. Union of India & Ors]. .“The Courts often experience abusive and frivolous litigation which results in an enormous amount of wastage of time. While the code of ethics exists for lawyers, the same does not exist in case of litigants appearing in person, which is a barrier in itself for the justice delivery system. This embargo of absence of ethical conduct needs to be addressed by the Bar Council of India, and some guidelines for establishment of ethical code for self-represented litigants need to be framed,” the order stated.Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said that self-represented litigants bear certain responsibilities when presenting their case before the courts.“They have a duty to critically assess the merits of their claims and consider whether there is a reasonable legal basis for their case. Since frivolous litigation burdens the Court system, wastes judicial resources, and hinders the administration of justice, it is the responsibility of the self-represented litigants to ensure that their case has a genuine legal basis, supported by relevant facts and legal principles.”.In a detailed order, the Court also dealt with the issue of frivolous litigation clogging the court system.The Bench underlined that judicial infrastructure should not be allowed to be consumed at the cost of genuine innocent litigants waiting for their turn to have their case adjudicated upon.“The rise in pendency of cases due to Court's engagement with frivolous litigation is two-fold. Firstly, valuable judicial time and attention are expended on addressing meritless cases, diverting resources from other non-frivolous matters awaiting resolution. Secondly, the substantial utilisation of judicial time and resources in dealing with such cases contributes to the overall backlog, further magnifying the issue of pending cases.”.Justice Sharma made the observations while dealing with a batch of petitions filed by one Naresh Sharma claiming to be an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). It was his claim that the Indian government since independence has been indulging in crimes affecting the entire economy, some of which were committed in connivance with the Tata group of companies.The petitioner said that these institutions have established various public organisations criminally, thereby infringing his fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution, which extends to “right to have public organisations that are not criminally established”..The Court, however, held that the relief sought by the petitioner are inherently absurd and fell outside the scope of what relief it can grant.“It is also strange that the petitioner is aggrieved that there was no criminal record of him, available with police. It is not understandable why he wants a criminal record to be created by police against him. There are provisions to provide such a record, but it cannot be created by police to satisfy someone’s whims and fancies. Rather the authorities have shown patience and replied over 150 times as admitted by petitioner himself.”The Court concluded that the petitions are frivolous and vexatious as they challenged, demeaned, criticised and used language which is undeniably embarrassing and scandalous.“It was also devoid of any real issue being set out in intelligible form. The pleadings, reliefs and declarations sought from this Court were impossible to respond to for the sheer magnanimity of their absurdness. Due to the above reasons, this Court finds that filing of these writ petitions is certainly an abuse of process of law.”The plea was ultimately dismissed..Petitioner Naresh Sharma appeared in-person.Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Rakesh Kumar along with Advocate Sunil appeared for the Central government.Additional Standing Counsel (ASC) Sanjeev Bhandari with advocates Kunal Mittal and Saurabh Tanwar appeared for the Delhi government..[Read Order]