Maldives High Court which is responsible of handling several appeal cases have fallen into an unofficial recess, with no progress to any current cases.
This marks the longest High Court has stayed without actively working any cases lodged at the authority.
According to the court's official website the last case hearing scheduled and proceeded was on December 12, 2017 making it now more than a month without any productivity. Interestingly the website does not disclose if the court was placed in recess or not.
Meanwhile High Court has not been media friendly or public about the reasons behind the idling status of the legal body.
However it has become clear that several of High Court judges are currently on vacation while the judges who joined the Male' branch bench from the court's Southern branch have returned back to their originally designated sites.
Supreme Court had expressed concern of High Court's unofficial recess.
High Court falling into productivity setback roots from the insufficient judges at the helm of the bench. Currently High Court holds 7 judges out of which 3 of them reside at the Southern branch.
Before constitutional changes High Court must elect 9 judges to its bench, however the legal authority is still short of 2 judges. Following the amendment to the Constitution in June 2017, High Court must elect 11 judges to its bench.
However this had not been actively countered with, as the judges at High Court are still insufficient for adequate operations. The Northern branch of High Court has been in an inadvertent halt without any judges elected for the office while administrative staffs had commenced office days back.
Surprisingly the Northern branch of High Court lacks a designated Registrar, which had not been appointed after the last designated Registrar Hassan Ali was sacked.
