by Landmark judgment settles decades of ambiguity after petitioner’s counsel argued that widespread use of phrase in Indian public life constitutes implied legal immunity
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NEW DELHI, INDIA — The Supreme Court of India issued a landmark ruling Thursday holding that the phrase “please understand the situation,” and its variants “kindly adjust,” “situation is very difficult,” and “what to do, this is India,” do not constitute valid defences in civil or criminal proceedings, settling decades of ambiguity after a Lucknow-based contractor argued in his written submissions that these phrases, having been offered to government officials approximately forty-seven times during a disputed infrastructure project, should be interpreted as establishing a good-faith conduct record sufficient to mitigate liability for what the prosecution described as “the non-appearance of a bridge.”
The Case
The contractor, Ramesh Kumar Srivastava, had been engaged by the Uttar Pradesh Public Works Department to construct a 340-metre bridge over the Gomti River at a cost of twenty-three crore rupees. The bridge, having been budgeted, contracted, partially paid, and officially inaugurated in a ceremony attended by two state ministers, a district magistrate, and a photographer from a regional newspaper, subsequently failed to materialise in physical form. When questioned by auditors, Srivastava provided documentation of forty-seven instances in which he had communicated the phrase “please understand the situation” to various departmental officials over the three-year project period, and argued that repeated acceptance of this phrase without formal objection constituted implicit acknowledgment by the department of the situation’s inherent difficulty and therefore partial assumption of responsibility for the bridge’s non-existence.
The trial court rejected this argument. The High Court rejected it with greater specificity. The Supreme Court’s rejection, authored by Justice Anand Krishnamurthy, runs to sixty-seven pages and is notable for its comprehensive treatment of the phrase’s rhetorical function in Indian public and administrative life, which the judgment describes as “ubiquitous, well-understood, and legally meaningless.”
The Judgment
“The phrase ‘please understand the situation,'” Justice Krishnamurthy writes in paragraph 34, “functions in Indian administrative discourse as a signal of difficulty without a specification of its nature, an appeal to sympathy without an offer of remedy, and an implicit request for forbearance without a commitment to eventual performance. It is, in the assessment of this Court, among the most flexible phrases in the Indian lexicon, capable of expressing genuine distress, strategic delay, professional incompetence, deliberate evasion, and simple bad faith, often simultaneously and often without the speaker being entirely certain which is applicable. None of these functions, individually or collectively, constitute a legal defence.”
The judgment further holds that “kindly adjust” is “a request rather than a right,” that “what to do, this is India” is “an accurate description of a situation rather than a justification for it,” and that “situation is very difficult” requires, to have any legal relevance, “a specification of which situation, how difficult, by whose assessment, and what steps have been taken to address the difficulty,” none of which Srivastava had provided.
Broader Implications
Legal scholars across India described the judgment as “significant,” “long overdue,” and in one case “something I have been waiting for since my first year of practice.” The Indian Express noted that the phrases in question appear in an estimated 34 percent of complaint responses filed with government consumer dispute redressal forums, and that the ruling would require government departments and contractors to replace “please understand the situation” with something more substantive when responding to complaints, a change that several bureaucratic observers described as “a significant operational challenge for several departments I could name but will not.”
Srivastava has been ordered to repay the advance received for the bridge, plus interest calculated over the project period, plus the cost of the inaugural ceremony, including the photographer. The bridge remains unbuilt. The river continues to require crossing. A new tender has been issued. The tender documents include a specific clause stating that the phrase “please understand the situation” will not be accepted as a progress update. This clause was added by a junior official who had read the Supreme Court judgment. The tender committee approved it unanimously. Several members were seen smiling. This, in the context of government bridge procurement, represents significant progress.
The Supreme Court judgment has prompted several follow-up questions from lawyers and commentators about whether other common phrases in Indian administrative and commercial discourse might now require re-evaluation. A legal column in Bar and Bench asked whether “it will be done by EOD” could be similarly challenged when EOD was not defined, whether “the matter is under consideration” constituted a commitment or an evasion, and whether “as per your kind request” in a letter responding to a complaint that was then ignored represented a misrepresentation. The Supreme Court’s judgment did not address these questions, which it described in its final paragraph as “matters for future consideration in appropriate proceedings.” Justice Krishnamurthy’s judgment did include one passage that legal scholars have widely quoted: “The phrase ‘please understand the situation’ is, at its best, an honest admission that the speaker cannot solve the problem they have created. At its worst, it is an attempt to make the person harmed by that failure responsible for accepting it. In neither case does it constitute a legal defence. But in the first case, at least, it is sincere. Sincerity is not a defence. It is, however, the beginning of accountability, which is where legal remedies end and civic culture begins.” The bridge remains unbuilt. The river remains uncrossed. The sincerity is noted for the record.
Understanding the situation at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.
Also adjusting at The Onion | Private Eye | Waterford Whispers
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/supreme-court-india-please-understand-situation-not-legal-defence/
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