Delhi High Court: The Division Bench of Manmohan, ACJ.*, and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, J., directed the Registry to circulate this order to brother and sister Judges assigned with such cases so that priority was given to all criminal cases/appeals/revisions pending before them against the Members of Parliament and Legislative Assemblies, as it was essential for expeditious and effective disposal of such cases.
The Court was informed by Registry that there were currently thirty-four pending cases/appeals/ revisions involving MPs and MLAs, before the Single Bench of this Court in which orders of stay of trial had been passed and were continuing for a period of more than six months. Thus, the Court directed the Registry to re-allocate/re-distribute these cases to such Courts/Benches as was considered appropriate and effective for expeditious disposal of such cases, so that stay applications were disposed of in the subject cases expeditiously and trial of such cases could conclude before the designated Special Courts.
The Court relied on Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. Union of India, (2024) 1 SCC 185 and further directed the Registry of this Court to circulate this order to brother and sister Judges assigned with such cases so that priority was given to all criminal cases/appeals/revisions pending before them against the Members of Parliament and Legislative Assemblies, as it was essential for expeditious and effective disposal of such cases.
The Court relied on its earlier order dated 21-12-2023 in Designated Courts for MPs/MLAs, In re, W.P.(CRL) 1542 of 2020 and as far as the subject cases pending before the District Court were concerned, the Court directed the designated Courts concerned to give priority, first of all to criminal cases against MPs and MLAs punishable with death or life imprisonment, then to cases punishable with imprisonment for five years or more and then hear other cases.
The Court further requested all the Judges to refrain from adjourning the subject cases except for rare and compelling reasons.
The matter would next be listed on 20-5-2024.
[Designated Courts for MPs/MLAs, In re, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 2477, decided on 2-4-2024]
*Judgment authored by: Acting Chief Justice Manmohan
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Respondents: Sandeep Sethi, Senior Advocate as Amicus Curiae; Shreya Sethi, Sumer Dev Seth, Riya Kumar, Rajat Aneja, Aditya Sharma, Rishabh Jain, Advocates
