Supreme Court Lays Down SOP: ‘Don’t Summon Officials Arbitrarily’

New Delhi: Courts around India must not summon officials arbitrarily, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud has said.

The bench, also comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra, laid down Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) on how government officials should be summoned to appear before courts and said that these must be followed by all high courts.

The top court also cautioned that officials shouldn’t be humiliated or comments made on their attire.

The bench top court emphasised the courts must refrain from commenting on attire “unless there is a violation of the dress code of their own office.”

The court’s remarks came while disposing a plea filed by Uttar Pradesh government against an Allahabad High Court order last year to summon two senior government officers.

The Supreme Court, while setting aside the High Court’s order, had said that frequently summoning government officials was contrary to the scheme envisaged by the Constitution.

“We have formulated an SOP now whereby government officials will be summoned by courts. This SOP emphasises on courts steering away from arbitrary summoning of officials ushering in maturity,” the CJI-led bench said.

“Power of criminal contempt cannot be invoked against officials of the state of Uttar Pradesh. The frequency of such orders summoning such officials runs contrary to the scheme envisaged by the constitution,” the judgment stated.

The court said government officials should not be summoned if issues can be sorted by way of affidavits from the officials.

However, the top court did acknowledge that personal appearance of officials may be required for evidence in summary proceedings and if there is suppression of facts.

Significantly, the court directed that an official can’t be summoned just because his or her view is different from the court’s view.

“For summoning government officials, advance notice must be given for adequate preparation and the first option for such an appearance must be through video conferencing,” the order stated.

An invitational link for the video conferencing appearance has to be sent by the Registry of the Court to the given mobile number and email ID of the concerned official by SMS, WhatsApp, email at least one day before the scheduled hearing, the order read.