Providing an insiders perspective on the functioning of the higher judiciary, the Supreme Court today said that judges may have lost their will for hard work. A bench of Justices G S Singhvi and K S Radhakrishnan said judges in the higher courts prefer not to tackle complex or complicated disputes, and prefer to pass the buck to their brother judges or even to the lower judiciary.

Of late, we have come across several orders which would indicate that some of the judges are averse to decide disputes when they are complex or complicated, and would find ways to pass on the burden to their brethren or remand matters to lower courts not for good reasons, Justice Radhakrishnan, who wrote the judgment observed.

And few other judges, the verdict says, just in order to maintain a good disposal rate or for statistical purposes prefer to get rid of the cases all together, or drive the litigants away with an order to approach other authorities. These authorities then tend to decide disputes which the judges should have decided, the judgment said.