It is in public interest to set up courts to try lawmakers, says Supreme Court

Justice N.V. Ramana, main a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, on Wednesday mentioned the courtroom has solely public interest and religion in judiciary in thoughts whereas pushing for the setting up of particular courts to expeditiously try sitting and former MPs and MLAs accused of assorted crimes.

“The purpose of this adjudication is in public interest and to maintain public faith in judiciary by making sure that long-pending cases against sitting and former MPs and MLAs are decided without delay… It is for the public we have taken up this case”, Justice Ramana defined.

The Bench was contemplating a report filed by a committee of the Madras High Court that raised reservations over the setting up of particular courts to solely try legislators for varied offences.

The committee mentioned that particular courts can’t be “offender-centric”. It reasoned, “An MP/MLA, who commits an offence under POCSO Act (or other Special Acts like Prevention of Corruption Act, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act) can only be tried by a Special Court created under the POCSO Act (PC Act, NDPS Act) and there cannot be another Special Court exclusively for trial of an MP/MLA, who commits POCSO offence”.

On this, the apex courtroom gave the Madras High Court counsel Anandh Kannan two weeks’ time to reply.

The committee report, dated October 13, drew particular consideration from the Bench because it comes in the face of a 2017 Supreme Court order authorising the Centre to set up 12 Special Courts to solely try legal politicians.

It additionally comes at a time when a three-judge Bench led by Justice Ramana is methods to expedite these trials pending for years, in some circumstances, for many years. Over 4,400 legal trials are pending towards legislators. Of this over 2,500 trials contain sitting legislators.

But the Madras High Court’s Criminal Rules Committee on Special Courts for Trial of Criminal Cases towards MPs/MLAs, composed of Justices P.N. Prakash, G. Jayachandran and N. Sathish Kumar, mentioned Special Courts can’t be set up on the premise of judicial or government orders.

The committee additionally raised robust reservations towards setting up Special Courts in Tamil Nadu.

“The existing Court structure in the State of Tamil Nadu, which is robust, is more than enough to deal with the cases involving MPs and MLAs”, the committee mentioned.

Countering a submission made that the High Court had stayed 92 circumstances filed towards politicians in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Kannan mentioned 85% of those circumstances handled defamation allegations.