KATHMANDU, April 27: The Supreme Court (SC) has a trend of postponing hearings on 25 percent cases in its daily cause lists.

"We have an overall trend of postponing 25 percent cases every day and this trend is not limited only to the Supreme Court. This practice is found at all the three tiers of the judiciary," SC Spokesperson Narayan Panthee said in a press briefing on Thursday. 

Hearings on 50 of the total 206 cases published in the SC's daily cause list on Thursday were postponed; hearings on 25 cases were put off because those cases were assigned to judges who were not supposed to hear them legally; orders were issued in relation to 35 cases; decisions were scheduled following the hearing on four cases and 42 cases were decided following hearings conducted at various benches. 

There has been a wrong trend of postponing hearings on cases at a time when the judiciary has got a new leadership and most of the complicated cases such as corruption cases and other high profile cases are being removed from the daily and weekly cause lists of the SC. 

Either party to a case or its lawyers have the right to postpone the hearings on that case whenever the lawyers fall sick or the clients have to confront situations beyond their control.
"We started tackling the tendency of postponing hearings on cases when we adopted the bulk hearing system in which cases of a similar nature are heard at the same time," Panthee  said, adding, "We cannot say hearings on cases were postponed because of a change in the leadership."

 
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