The Allahabad High Court has told lawyers, in no uncertain terms, to stop naming courts and tribunals as parties when challenging their orders. Justice Subhash Vidyarthi made the observation while hearing a criminal revision plea under Section 19(4) of the Family Courts Act. Notably, the Supreme Court had deprecated the practice decades ago. Yet advocates keep doing it anyway.
“It is high time that this practice should be stopped. Therefore, I request the learned advocates to desist from impleading unnecessary and improper parties, more particularly the Courts and Tribunals whose orders are challenged before the High Court and who cannot defend their orders,” the court said in its order dated July 20.
What triggered the observation
The case itself involved a challenge to a family court order that had directed proceedings to continue ex parte against the revisionist. At the outset, the State raised a preliminary objection: the applicant had wrongly named the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Lucknow, as the first opposite party.
That objection gave the bench an opening to address a pattern it clearly found frustrating. The court pointed to Supreme Court rulings holding that civil courts, which decide matters, are courts in the strictest sense of the term. Furthermore, neither the court nor the presiding officer defends an order before a superior court when that order goes unchallenged by them directly.
What stood out in the order was the timeline. The court noted that despite the Supreme Court’s clear pronouncements, several advocates practising before the Lucknow Bench continued impleading courts as opposite parties regardless.
“In spite of the aforesaid clarification by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, several of the learned counsel practicing in the High Court at Lucknow are not following the mandate of the Hon’ble Supreme Court and they are continuing with the practice of impleading the Courts as opposite parties, which practice has been strongly deprecated by the Hon’ble Supreme Court as early as in the year 1995,” the order read.
Calling the practice “highly improper,” Justice Vidyarthi repeated his request that advocates stop naming courts and tribunals as parties. He emphasized this request particularly since those bodies have no way to defend the orders being challenged.
How the underlying case was decided
On the merits, the court found the revisionist had been given opportunities to file objections before the ex parte order was passed but hadn’t availed them. Moreover, he had known about the proceedings for a long time before approaching the High Court.
The bench also found that he had concealed the actual date on which he became aware of the proceedings, both before the Family Court and in his revision plea.
The court reiterated the settled legal position on such applications. “An order to proceed ex-parte can only be recalled if the party gives a reasonable explanation for his absence before the Court when the matter was ordered to proceed ex-parte.
It must not be a case of negligence or want of bona fide attributable to such party and if such is the case then an application for recall of an ex-parte order can not to be allowed.”
Finding no illegality in the Family Court’s decision to proceed ex parte or in its rejection of the recall application, the High Court dismissed the revision plea.
Whether this latest reminder actually changes practice at the Lucknow Bench remains to be seen. This is especially true given that the same Supreme Court position has gone unheeded for roughly three decades already.
For now, the order stands as a fresh marker that courts will keep flagging the issue procedurally. At the same time, it disposes of little more than a technical objection in an otherwise routine family law dispute.
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