The Madras High Court has deprecated the practice of lower courts using unfamiliar abbreviations in official records, reports Times of India..The order recording the High Court’s displeasure was passed by a Division Bench of Justices S Nagamuthu and M Sathyanarayanan in a case pertaining to extension of remand of certain accused arrested by the National Investigation Agency..The trigger for the order was the use of the following abbreviation by the special judge:.‘Acc. Pro. R.E. Till 18/07/14’,”. .In the above abbreviation, ”Acc” meant ‘Accused’, “Pro” stood for ‘Produced’ and “RE” stood for ‘Remand Extended’. Terming the above as “telegraphic abbreviation”, the court in its order said,.“We find it difficult to understand this telegraphic abbreviation in the order of the special judge. But R Muthukumarasamy, standing counsel for high court, explained the abbreviations and we also infer that ‘Acc’ means ‘Accused’, ‘Pro’ means “Produced” and ‘RE’ means “Remand Extended.”.The Court said that such practice needs to be deprecated and the orders passed by courts should be understandable by common man..“This practice of courts using unfamiliar abbreviations needs to be necessarily deprecated. The orders passed by courts should be understandable by a common man, more particularly the person in whose favour or against the order is passed.”.It proceeded to express the hope that judges in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will refrain from using such abbreviations..“We only expect that judicial officers in this state and in the union territory of Puducherry shall not hereinafter use these kinds of abbreviations understandable only to the maker of the abbreviations. They are expected to write orders legibly without using unfamiliar abbreviations.”
The Madras High Court has deprecated the practice of lower courts using unfamiliar abbreviations in official records, reports Times of India..The order recording the High Court’s displeasure was passed by a Division Bench of Justices S Nagamuthu and M Sathyanarayanan in a case pertaining to extension of remand of certain accused arrested by the National Investigation Agency..The trigger for the order was the use of the following abbreviation by the special judge:.‘Acc. Pro. R.E. Till 18/07/14’,”. .In the above abbreviation, ”Acc” meant ‘Accused’, “Pro” stood for ‘Produced’ and “RE” stood for ‘Remand Extended’. Terming the above as “telegraphic abbreviation”, the court in its order said,.“We find it difficult to understand this telegraphic abbreviation in the order of the special judge. But R Muthukumarasamy, standing counsel for high court, explained the abbreviations and we also infer that ‘Acc’ means ‘Accused’, ‘Pro’ means “Produced” and ‘RE’ means “Remand Extended.”.The Court said that such practice needs to be deprecated and the orders passed by courts should be understandable by common man..“This practice of courts using unfamiliar abbreviations needs to be necessarily deprecated. The orders passed by courts should be understandable by a common man, more particularly the person in whose favour or against the order is passed.”.It proceeded to express the hope that judges in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will refrain from using such abbreviations..“We only expect that judicial officers in this state and in the union territory of Puducherry shall not hereinafter use these kinds of abbreviations understandable only to the maker of the abbreviations. They are expected to write orders legibly without using unfamiliar abbreviations.”
