The Verdictum: Justice Swatanter Kumar

Each week, The Verdictum examines the judgments delivered by a retired judge of the Supreme Court. Along with analysis of the numbers, The Verdictum also analyses various facts and figures associated with the judge. This week, we examine the number of judgments delivered by Justice Swatanter Kumar .Recently in the news for allegations of sexual harassment that led to a defamation suit before the High Court, and a transfer petition in the Supreme Court, Justice Swatanter Kumar was elevated to the Supreme Court on December 18, 2009. Aged 61 at the time of elevation, he enjoyed a tenure of 1,109 days at the apex court. Enrolled in the Delhi Bar Council in 1971, he served as an Additional District Sessions Judge in Himachal Pradesh, a post he held for eight months before resigning..J. Kumar was appointed an Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court on November 11, 1994 aged 47, going on to serve at the High Courts of Punjab & Haryana, and Delhi for the next ten years. On March 31, 2007, he was made the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, a post he held for thirty-one months. He was elevated to the Supreme Court just thirteen days before his sixty-second birthday..Delivering his first judgment on Janaury 11, 2010 while sitting with J. SH Kapadia, J. Swatanter Kumar was involved in a total of 263 judgments* during his three-year tenure. Of these, he authored 61 while a bench that consisted of him and at least two other judges delivered 58 judgments. He delivered 9 judgments in his first complete month as a Supreme Court judge and 32 judgments in his last month..Year Wise Distribution of judgments.Nearly half of the total judgments were delivered in the final year of his tenure, with 81 judgments in the first year and 55 in the second year..Month-wise breakdown of judgments.As was seen in J. Deepak Verma’s tenure, for J. Kumar as well it is the month of July that was the most productive with a total of 52 judgments delivered throughout his tenure. Next comes the traditionally short month, in terms of working days, of December (39 judgments) followed by May. The least productive months were March (12), followed by November (13) and October (14). Twelve judgments were given in the month of June..Day-wise productivity.J. Swatanter Kumar delivered an average of 0.24 judgments per day over the course of his tenure with the month of July being the most productive (0.56 judgments) followed by December (0.42) and May (0.28). The least productive months were March and June (0.13 judgments) followed by November (0.14 judgments)..Bench-wise distribution of judgments.J. Kumar sat with a total of 19 judges while sitting in Division benches, five more than Justice Deepak Verma. In terms of number of judgments, J. Kumar was most proficient while sitting with BS Chauhan (60 judgments) followed by J. AK Patnaik (48 judgments) and J. Madan Lokur (21 judgments)..*Source: www.judis.nic.in.Lead image taken from here.(Bar & Bench would like to thank interns Amiya Pati and Aishwarya Dhakarey for their research and assistance in data compilation)