Vakil Help Desk News: the Supreme Court has held that when a Bench directs a High Court to list a matter after a set number of days, the registry should ordinarily exclude any court vacation falling within that period, so litigants are not made to wait longer than the Court intended.
Vakil Help Desk News, Litigation & Courts. When a court directs that a case be listed "after" a certain number of days, how should the registry count that time if a court vacation falls in between? The Supreme Court has clarified this in Senior Intelligence Officer v. Mohammed Kamran (2026).
The point of law
The Court held that where a Bench directs a matter to be listed after a specified number of days, the High Court registry should ordinarily exclude the intervening court vacation period while working out the date. In other words, days on which the court is closed for vacation should not normally be counted towards the number of days the Bench fixed.
Why it matters
- A direction to list a case 'after 15 days' is meant to give parties a real, working gap — not a period that is swallowed up by a court holiday.
- If the registry counts vacation days, a matter can effectively be pushed back or taken up sooner than the Bench intended, which can prejudice a litigant, especially in urgent matters such as bail, stay or interim relief.
- The ruling gives registries and litigants a clear, uniform way to calculate listing dates.
For anyone with a case in the courts, this is a practical reminder that the timing of a hearing is governed by rules that can be enforced. If a matter is wrongly listed, the listing itself can be questioned.
What this means for you
If your case is directed to be listed 'after' a set number of days and a court vacation falls in that window, the vacation should normally not be counted — so check the date the registry fixes. If a hearing is listed too early or too late because vacation days were wrongly counted, your advocate can bring this to the court's notice and seek correction. Keep track of listing dates yourself, especially in time-sensitive matters.