Five Vacation-Bench Matters and a Last-Minute Adjournment Request
The High Court’s vacation bench has five matters to list on five consecutive working days, Monday to Friday, one per day: a PIL (A), a bail application (B), a tax appeal (C), a land-acquisition case (D), and a service matter (E). The Registrar’s standing instructions are: (1) the bail application must be heard before the tax appeal; (2) the PIL cannot be listed on Monday or Friday; (3) the land-acquisition case must be listed immediately after the tax appeal; (4) the service matter must be listed exactly two days before the PIL; and (5) the tax appeal cannot be listed on Friday. The cause list is provisional and the bench clerk must fix the order before 4 p.m. today. A last-minute request asks that the bail application be moved to Thursday because the public prosecutor is unavailable earlier. The clerk must decide whether the request can be accommodated without breaking any standing instruction, or whether the bench must be asked to relax one.
1. Determine the only valid Monday-to-Friday order. Show how the constraints eliminate alternatives.
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Use the fixed pair for E and A first. E must be exactly two days before A, so the possible pairs are (Mon, Wed), (Tue, Thu) and (Wed, Fri). A cannot be Monday or Friday, so all three pairs remain possible at this stage.
Now test C and D. D must be immediately after C, so the possible C-D pairs are (Mon, Tue), (Tue, Wed), (Wed, Thu) and (Thu, Fri). C cannot be Friday, which is already satisfied by these pairs.
Test A on Wednesday, with E on Monday. The remaining days are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The only possible C-D pair is (Thu, Fri), because (Tue, Wed) would collide with A on Wednesday. That leaves B on Tuesday, which satisfies B before C. Order: E, B, A, C, D.
Test A on Thursday, with E on Tuesday. Remaining days are Monday, Wednesday and Friday. No C-D pair fits: (Mon, Tue) collides with E, (Wed, Thu) collides with A, and (Thu, Fri) collides with A. This branch fails.
Therefore the only valid order is Monday E, Tuesday B, Wednesday A, Thursday C, Friday D.
2. Can the bail application be moved to Thursday while keeping all five instructions? Identify every instruction that blocks it.
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No. If B is listed on Thursday, instruction (1) requires C to be heard after B. The only day after Thursday is Friday, so C would have to be listed on Friday. That directly violates instruction (5), which bars the tax appeal on Friday.
Even if instruction (5) were ignored, instruction (3) creates a second block: D must be listed immediately after C. If C is on Friday, there is no later working day in the week for D.
So the request cannot be met by moving only the bail matter. The clerk must tell the bench that accommodating B on Thursday requires relaxing at least two instructions: the bar on C being listed on Friday and the immediate-after rule linking D to C. A single relaxation is not enough.
3. If the bench relaxes both the Friday bar for C and the immediate-after rule for D, give one valid order with B on Thursday and state what the clerk must record.
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With B on Thursday and C required to be after B, C must be Friday. The remaining matters A, D and E occupy Monday to Wednesday. E must be exactly two days before A, and A cannot be Monday or Friday. The only fit is E on Monday and A on Wednesday, leaving D on Tuesday.
Valid order: Monday E, Tuesday D, Wednesday A, Thursday B, Friday C.
Check: B is before C; A is not Monday or Friday; E is exactly two days before A. The two relaxed rules are visibly departed from: C is on Friday, and D is not immediately after C.
The clerk must record on the order sheet that the bench expressly relaxed instruction (3) and instruction (5), and must not present the list as complying with all five original instructions. The record should also note the reason, namely the public prosecutor’s unavailability, so that the departure is transparent if the cause list is challenged.