One of the judges on the Supreme Court Bench hearing appeals filed against the acquittal of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case has been changed.
The Bench originally had Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose as the lead judge and Justice R.K. Aggarwal as the puisne judge. Now, Justice Amitava Roy has taken the place of Justice Aggarwal on the Bench for the hearing scheduled for Friday (January 8).
In the last hearing on November 23, the apex court had asked the parties involved to file issues they wanted to highlight in their respective arguments to prevent any delay and add focus to the hearings. Justice Ghose, speaking for the Bench, had indicated that a date to hear the final arguments in the appeals may be fixed on January 8 itself.
“It will be a day-to-day hearing,” Justice Ghose remarked during the hearing.
During the hearing on October 12, 2015, the Supreme Court had assured that every party would get one chance to have its say in the case.
During that hearing, senior advocate L. Nageshwara Rao, for Ms. Jayalalithaa, had urged the apex court that “whatever the date may be... The appeals should be heard early”.
To this, Justice Ghose had suggested that “we will give you all three days’ time... A Monday to a Wednesday”.
In its appeal against the State High Court’s decision to acquit the accused persons, the Karnataka government said the judgment delivered on May 11 by Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy was “cryptic, lacks reasoning and illogical”. It had ridiculed the calculations arrived at by the judge, which resulted in the exoneration of Ms.Jayalalithaa and three co-accused – N. Sasikala Natarajan, V.N. Sudhakaran and J. Elavarasi - in the corruption case.
Ms. Jayalalithaa's counter in the SC had said the charges of conspiracy and abetment made against her are not established and at best a “myth”.
Re-affirming its role as the sole prosecuting agency in the case, Karnataka said the accused, as they claim, do not have any “untrammelled right not to be vexed again once there is an order of acquittal”.
