The Supreme Court’s grand plan to introduce a National Court of Appeal to reduce pendency failed to get support from the Centre.
Appearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi informed the court that setting up a National Court of Appeal (NCA) will not be possible nor desirable and to curb pendency, judges of the apex court must exercise restraint to entertain appeals arising from High Courts.
The need for NCA was raised in a PIl filed by a lawyer V Vasanthkumar who alleged that Supreme Court was failing to meet the aspirations of speedy justice of citizens who have to wait for years to get a hearing for their cases. In addition, it even argued that access to justice of citizens was affected since most litigation of Supreme Court was arising from matters decided by High Courts situated near the Supreme Court and only 2 per cent cases arrived from distant places like Kerala.
The bench, also comprising Justice UU lalit, however, decided to go ahead with the hearing of the case as the two amicus curiae appointed by Court — senior advocates KK Venugopal and Salman Khurshid, supported the move for establishing a NCA. The Court asked the A-G, Venugopal and Khurshid to submit propositions on whether creation of NCA will dilute the power of Supreme Courts or alter basic structure of Constitution as it seeks to modify Article 136 (power of SC to grant special leave to appeal), held to be non-amendable by past SC judgments. The Court gave parties time till April 4 to file written submissions.