From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Wednesday agreed to list soon a pending PIL of Delhi BJP leader Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay filed in 2006, seeking a life-time ban on the convicted MPs and MLAs from contesting the elections.
The Bench, which also comprised Justices A S Bopanna and Ms Hima Kohli, was responding to a mention in this regard by senior advocate Vijay Hansaria, who is assisting the court as an amicus curiae (friend of court). He pressed for an urgent hearing on the basis of his submssions last week of a detailed report on the criminal cases against the lawmakers — sitting and former MPs and MLAs.
In his report, Hansaria has described an increase of 862 criminal cases against the former and sitting lawmakers in the last three years, raising the total of 4,984 cases pending before sessions and magistrate courts.
“Despite a series of directions by this court for trial of the lawmakers by special courts and its continuous monitoring, as many as 4,984 cases are pending, 1,899 of which are more than five years old while 1,475 cases are pending for two to five years.
In August last year, the top court had barred withdrawal of prosecutions against the sitting and former lawmakers, without the permission of the concerned High Court and ruled that all judges hearing such cases in special courts would continue in their posts until its further orders.
The Hansaria report says more and more persons with the criminal antecedents are occupying seats in Parliament and the state legislatures and therefore an urgency of stringent steps to expeditiously dispose of the pending criminal cases.
The report gives the telltale details of the criminal cases against the lawmakers. “The pending cases as in December 2019 were 4,110 that swelled to 4,859 in October 2020. Even after disposal of 2,775 cases after December 4, 2018, the cases have increased to 4984,” the report said.
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