The Adjournment Notice: Grammar, Register and an Ambiguous Date
You are the dealing assistant in the civil section of a district court. Because a holiday has been declared for 5 July 2024, every matter listed that day must be adjourned to 12 July 2024. A junior clerk drafts the notice as follows:
"सूचित किया जाता है कि समस्त अधिवक्ता एवं वादकारी को यह सूचित किया जाता है कि दिनांक 05/07/2024 को माननीय न्यायालय में अवकाश रहने के कारण सभी वाद दिनांक 12/07/2024 तक स्थगित किए जाते हैं। अतः सभी संबंधित अपने-अपने पत्रावलियों के साथ आवष्यक कार्यवाही हेतु उपस्थित होने का कष्ट करें।"
The notice must be pasted on the notice board and uploaded on the court website the same evening. The stenographer also asks whether an English line should be added below the Hindi text for advocates who file in English. A senior clerk says the draft is "fine, everyone writes like this".
1. Identify five defects in the draft and give the correction with the grammatical reasoning for each.
Read the worked answer
- "समस्त अधिवक्ता एवं वादकारी को" - after समस्त and before the postposition को, the plural oblique is required: अधिवक्ताओं एवं वादकारियों को. Without it the sentence reads as if a single advocate and a single litigant are addressed.
- "तक" - a matter is adjourned to a date (12.07.2024 को), not till a date. तक would mean the case stands adjourned continuously until then, which is a different order.
- "अपने-अपने पत्रावलियों" - पत्रावली is feminine, so the agreeing form is अपनी-अपनी पत्रावलियों.
- "आवष्यक" - spelling; the standard form is आवश्यक.
- Duplication - सूचित किया जाता है ... यह सूचित किया जाता है; one introductory clause is enough.
- Register - उपस्थित होने का कष्ट करें is over-polite letter language; a court notice directs: उपस्थित होना सुनिश्चित करें.
- Date format - 05/07/2024 and 12/07/2024 are read as month/day by some readers; write 05.07.2024 (05 जुलाई 2024).
2. Rewrite the operative part of the notice in clean official Hindi.
Read the worked answer
"सूचित किया जाता है कि दिनांक 05.07.2024 (05 जुलाई 2024) को माननीय न्यायालय में अवकाश घोषित रहने के कारण उस दिन सूचीबद्ध समस्त वाद दिनांक 12.07.2024 (12 जुलाई 2024) को स्थगित किए जाते हैं।
संबंधित अधिवक्ताओं एवं वादकारियों से अपेक्षा है कि वे निर्धारित तिथि को अपनी-अपनी पत्रावलियों सहित उपस्थित होना सुनिश्चित करें। किसी अत्यावश्यक आवेदन हेतु संबंधित पक्षकार न्यायालय के आदेश से उसी दिन उपस्थित हो सकते हैं।
आदेशानुसार।"
Note the reasoning behind the changes: plural oblique forms (point addressed to many), को for the fresh date, feminine agreement with पत्रावली, corrected spelling, one concise notice clause, and a closing formula that matches office practice instead of an emotional request.
3. Should the notice state why the holiday was declared, and should an English line be added? Explain your judgement.
Read the worked answer
State only what the record shows: that a holiday is declared in the court on that date. The cause may be a public holiday, a local order, or a direction received late in the day, and none of it is needed for a litigant to act. Adding a reason invites speculation, and if the reason later changes, the notice board carries a statement nobody can correct. What must be added is the practical line: what a party with an urgent interim application should do.
On the English line: yes, add a short one. The court's own filing practice and the bar include advocates who draft in English, and a bilingual heading costs two lines while removing a genuine risk that a reader follows only the ambiguous date. Keep the English text a faithful, equally formal version, not a longer paraphrase - two texts that contradict each other on the date would be worse than one.