Somewhere in a District and Sessions Court this week, a bail application will be argued on a Tuesday that was drafted on a Sunday night. An appeal will turn on an authority someone found at eleven o'clock, three days before the hearing. A High Court matter will be filed on time because a pleading got redrafted twice after the first version did not hold. This is the part of litigation nobody photographs. It is also the part that decides cases. For most advocates in India, that
It is not every day that a judge stops to compliment a piece of drafting. The matter was a long-running auction case, the kind that accumulates volume and outlives the patience of everyone involved. The application before the court was an adjournment: routine, procedural, the sort of thing a bench reads quickly and moves past. This one it did not move past. Hearing the point, the judge observed that a judgment-debtor and a decree-holder are two entirely different things. It i
.png)
