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A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said the directions were intended to strengthen the judicial administration and ensure timely delivery of judgments.

Among the key directions, the Supreme Court said that bail applications should be heard and the order should preferably be pronounced and uploaded the same day. If it is reserved, it should be pronounced the next day and uploaded on the website.

The Supreme Court also called for reasoned judgments pronounced in open courts to be uploaded on the High Court website within 24 hours.

The directions came on a petition filed by four convicts serving life sentences whose criminal appeals had been reserved by the Jharkhand High Court in 2022 but the verdicts were pronounced three years later. While deciding their plea, the Supreme Court chose to address what it described as a wider institutional issue affecting courts across the country.

The Court said that orders in cases seeking bail or suspension of sentence should be communicated to the jail authorities as soon as it is pronounced, and that the undertrial or convict must be released, preferably the same day or at most the next day.

It also said that if a judgment in a criminal appeal or a death reference is reserved and the appellant is in custody, then a clarification can be sought by the parties within seven days of the date of reserving the judgment.

The bench also said that at the end of every month, an automated list of reserved judgments that remain pending must be generated and placed before the Chief Justice of the High Court, with a copy to the bench concerned. If a judgment is not delivered in three months of reserving the order, the Registrar General must place the matter before the Chief Justice, who is then required to bring the delay to the notice of the bench concerned within two weeks, the top court said.

Crucially, where a judgment remains pending despite these steps, the Supreme Court said the case must be reassigned to another bench for a fresh hearing.

A similar string of directions, aimed at improving access to justice were issued in a 2001 case, Anil Rai v. State of Bihar, in which the Supreme Court noted that delivering judgments long after arguments had concluded could affect public confidence in the judicial process.

The Court had directed the Chief Justices of High Courts to monitor reserved judgments and ensure that lists of pending reserved matters were periodically prepared. It also held that if a judgment remained pending for more than 3 months, a party could move an application seeking an early pronouncement. However, if six months lapsed without a judgment, the litigant could approach the Chief Justice seeking reassignment of the case to another bench. However, implementation varied across high courts, and delays continued to surface.