CBEC SOP on Litigation in Appellate Forums - Proof reading absent?
CBEC's Directorate of Legal Affairs has released a ‘Standard Operating Procedures on Litigation in Appellate Forums'.
In her preface, Sandhya Baliga, Member (L&J), states,
"The Standard Operating Procedures for handling litigation in the Supreme Court, High Court and CESTAT has been a long felt need. This Manual of SOP is one of the flagship documents published from the Directorate of Legal Affairs, to streamline handling of litigation in the Department.
It has been our endeavour to ensure clarity and brevity while covering the have been written given the format of examination of the orders in accordance with the provisions of law."
Obviously, babus don't believe in proof reading. In the Member's Preface, apparently some lines are missing in the above para and nobody bothered to read it a second time - even if it was a preface by the Hon'ble and exalted MEMBER!
This minor lapse not withstanding the SOP is a well-prepared manual, which should be useful to the Departmental officers in effectively handling their cases in the various appellate forums.
The manual says, "Every decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court is final and needs to be implemented without waiting for any administrative concurrence."
PS: After we published the above item, we have been informed by Directorate of Legal Affairs that the unintentional error was corrected at the time of issue of the manual and what we had carried was a draft version. We are grateful to the Board and Directorate – the corrected version is now uploaded. The para in question now reads as,
It has been our endeavour to ensure clarity and brevity while covering the minutest issue relating to litigation at various forums. Specific chapters have been written given the format of examination of the orders in accordance with the provisions of law.
We have now uploaded the corrected version.