Bombay High Court directs principal district judges to provide details of ‘pending trials’ against MPs, MLAs

On Friday, the bench noted, “It has come to our notice that certain trials against MP/MLAs are pending in large numbers before trial courts across the state. We direct that the Principal District Judges of all districts shall furnish details of trials pending and stage of trial in tabular form (charts) within a period of four weeks.”

On April 19 this year, the bench had passed orders with regard to nearly six cases and gave permission to prosecution to withdraw the same. On March 22, the bench passed an order with regard to 22 cases, which were already withdrawn since September 2022, granting approval for their withdrawal.

The state government then informed the bench that it had taken a policy decision to withdraw cases arising out of social and political causes as per Government Resolutions (GRs) of March 14, 2016, and December 16, 2020.

It had submitted that a committee had been constituted to consider withdrawal of prosecutions in those cases if there was no loss of life or destruction of property in excess of Rs.5 lakh. Based on the recommendations of the committee, the state government issued instructions to concerned prosecutors to file applications for withdrawal of the proceedings.

After Additional Public Prosecutor A R Patil submitted on Friday that in certain matters, trials are not proceeding further due to interim orders passed by courts including the high court, the bench asked Patil to furnish details of such matters to the Registrar General of the high court before the next date of hearing after four weeks.