The Supreme Court has ordered all higher courts to monitor ongoing criminal cases against parliamentarians and MPs.
New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court today called for responses from the Center, the AAP government and its own registry on a plea it launched on directing the Supreme Court to all high courts to monitor criminal cases in course against deputies and deputies.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan issued a notice asking them to file affidavits outlining action taken pursuant to the Supreme Court’s directive of September 16.
“Highlight the work done by you (Center, Delhi government and High Court Registry),” the bench said.
The chief justice also said he had already given orders to appoint four judges to the subordinate courts.
On September 16, the Supreme Court asked chief justices of all high courts to immediately list in a competent court all pending criminal cases involving sitting lawmakers and former lawmakers where the stay was granted.
The investigation came on a petition that was filed in 2016 and raised the issue of undue delay in resolving criminal cases against former and sitting lawmakers.
The Supreme Court issued the instruction after finding that there had been no substantial improvement in the handling of pending criminal cases against sitting lawmakers and former lawmakers.
He ordered the higher courts that in the event of a stay deemed necessary, the court should hear the case from day to day and dispose of it quickly, preferably within two months, without unnecessary adjournment. “
It goes without saying that the COVID-19 condition should not be an obstacle to complying with this directive, as these issues could be easily heard by video conference, the high court also said.
Referring to a report presented to it on this case, the Supreme Court indicated that it had indicated that around 175 cases falling under the 1988 law on the prevention of corruption and 14 cases falling under the 2002 law on money laundering prevention were pending against sitting legislators or former legislators. .
These are in addition to the 4,442 criminal cases reported as pending according to the previous amicus report dated September 8, 2020, the Supreme Court noted.
With regard to increasing the number of special courts and streamlining pending criminal cases, we consider it appropriate that before giving a specific direction in this regard, the Chief Justice of each high court should be instructed to formulate and to submit an action. plan to rationalize the number of special courts needed, he added.
He indicated that the aspects to be taken into consideration when developing the action plan were: total number of pending cases in each district, required number of proportionate special courts, number of courts currently available, number of judges and categories of subjects. number of cases, the term of office of the judges to be appointed, the number of cases to be assigned to each judge, the time limit for settling cases, the distance from the courts to be appointed and the adequacy of the infrastructure.
The summit also said that when preparing the action plan, the chief justices of the high courts should also consider whether it would be necessary and appropriate to refer the cases where the trial is proceeding as soon as possible.
The chief judges of the high courts will also designate a special college, made up of themselves and their representative, to monitor the progress of these trials, he said:
We further call on the chief justices of all high courts to immediately enumerate all pending criminal cases involving sitting lawmakers or former lawmakers (MPs and MPs), especially those for which a stay has been granted, before one or more appropriate bodies including the Chief Justice. and / or their representatives, he also said.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
