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Pointing out presence of 4122 cases pending against current(2324) and former(1675) MPs and MLAs, amicus curiae Vijay Hansaria has suggested that a particular court at Sessions and Magisterial level in each district, to try criminal cases involving legislators, be nominated.
The submissions were made in the course of hearing of a plea filed by lawyer and BJP leader, Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay to provide adequate infrastructure for setting up Special Courts to decide criminal cases against people’s representatives, public servants and members of the judiciary.
On November 1 hearing a bench comprising of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi,Justice U.U.Lalit and Justice K.M.Joseph had sought detailed data on the pending criminal cases against legislators, in order to decide on the need for constituting more special courts for dealing with such cases.
Mr.Hansaria’s submission further pointed out that ground reality has been quite different, even though the Apex Court had, in Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India, ordered that criminal cases against elected representative be disposed of within one year from the date of framing of charges.
While acknowledging the constitution of 12 special courts for trial of such cases, he asserted that these courts have been constituted non-uniformly, without regard to the number of pending cases.
Mr Hansaria also suggested that high courts be directed to assign such cases to a designated Sessions court and Magistrate court in each district/sub-division. Transfer of such cases to one or two courts in each state will contribute to the delay instead of expediting the cases with hearing cases on a day to day basis without grant of adjournment. He also suggested that each court must be ordered to submit a monthly status report to the respective high court and two special public prosecutors be designated by the states and Union territories ,for prosecuting cases in these special courts.
He further requested that high court be directed to furnish updated information on the progress made on the cases after four months to the Supreme Court as well as to him.
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