SC asks 19 states to list criminal cases against lawmakers

According to the Centre’s affidavit, 11 states, including Delhi, have designated special courts. The Delhi High Court has notified two courts, one headed by a magistrate and other by a district and sessions judge. Special courts have also started hearing cases involving lawmakers in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.

The bench directed that the details be furnished before October 10, when it will hear the matter next.

The bench ordered: “We direct chief secretaries of the above mentioned states and UTs as well as the registrars general of high courts in each state and UT to lay before us full and complete updated information as required in terms of our order…(they should submit) the precise number of cases which are presently pending and required to be transferred to special courts, whether the 12 special courts set up are functional and whether in view of the volume of cases that would be required to be transferred to the special courts, there is the necessity of setting up of additional courts.”

The court said that “on receipt of the requisite information…if so required, the court will monitor compliance of its orders passed from time to time by clubbing a number of states together for being separately taken up on each date of hearing”.

On November 1, 2017, the court, while hearing a PIL filed by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, had asked the Centre to constitute special courts to try criminal cases involving politicians and directed the government to come up with a scheme for setting up such courts.

The Centre replied that it had set up 12 special courts to try cases against politicians.