The Supreme Court on March 21, 2023 suggested a State-specific approach to setting up special courts for speedy trial of legislators even as its own amicus curiae flagged that criminal cases against legislators have leaped over the 5,000-mark, with 400 of them concerning heinous offences.
A Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha indicated that a "one-size-fits-all" approach may not resolve the problem of long pendency of criminal cases involving MPs and MLAs. Instead, the challenges, available infrastructure and workload of judicial officers in each State have to be gone through first.
"The solution will be different in each State… We will ask the High Courts what arrangements can be made… We have to know the details of the number of cases, judges," Justice Narasimha observed.
Dozen courts
In November 2017, the apex court had directed the setting up of special courts to exclusively try legislators within a deadline of one year. A dozen courts were set up for this purpose.
On Tuesday, a lawyer told the Bench that all 12 courts were clogged with cases which had not moved an inch all these years.
Amicus curiae, senior advocate Vijay Hansaria said the number of pending cases, in the meanwhile, had jumped from 4,112 to 5,112, according to reports submitted by various State High Courts to him.
"Lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers," Mr. Hansaria submitted.
"But the load is different for each judge in each State. Your own report shows that a judge in Karnataka handles anything between 13 to 196 cases, in Odisha it is zero to 30 and zero to two in Haryana… We have to look at the infrastructure and judicial space in each State before earmarking cases to judges," the Chief Justice addressed Mr. Hansaria.
The court is also considering a plea for lifetime ban on people convicted of offences from contesting elections and becoming Members of Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies.
The Centre had, in an affidavit filed in 2020, maintained in court that disqualification under the Representation of the People Act of 1951 for the period of prison sentence and six years thereafter was enough for legislators.
Mr. Hansaria however said a convicted MP or MLA could come back after the six-year ban and make laws.
In its affidavit in December 2020, the Ministry had rejected the idea of a lifetime ban on convicted persons contesting elections or forming or becoming an office-bearer of a political party. The Ministry had reasoned that MPs and MLAs were not bound by specific "service conditions". "They are bound by their oath to serve citizens and country... They are bound by propriety, good conscience and interest of the nation," the Ministry had argued.
