Pune courts: half public prosecutor posts lying vacant

Similarly,18 out of 36 posts of assistant PPs who plead cases in the judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) court are vacant,Pawar said. As per the Supreme Court rules,there has to be at least one PP appointed per court. An assistant PP works in the lower court (JMFC),where day-to-day criminal cases are heard,while an additional PP works in the sessions court.

Assistant PPs say that they have been assigned work of two to three courts that add to their workload. “I have been given the responsibility of assistant PP for two courtrooms. It becomes difficult to focus on one case,” said advocate Kiran Bendbhar who has been handling the responsibility for the past six months.

Another assistant PPs said it also results in increasing pendency of cases as further dates are sought by the prosecutors. The situation in the state is no different with only 430 out of 591 assistant public prosecutors at work. “We have requested the home ministry to sanction at least 300 more posts of assistant PPs for the state,” Pawar said. In the state,48 out of 90 sanctioned posts of additional PPs are vacant. Other than this shortfall of 48 prosecutors,there is a demand for 330 new posts of additional PPs in the state.

“We had put forth the statistics before State Home Minister R R Patil in January this year when he was in Pune. He had promised to start recruitment by May,but nothing has happened,” Pawar said.

According to a report of the Bombay High Court,Pune district had the highest pendency of cases in the state. There were 4.69 lakh cases pending till March 2010 with over 24 lakh pending cases in the state till January 2010-end.

vacant posts

18 of 36 for assistant PPs

7 of 9 for additional PPs