To have or not to have a National Court of Appeal has divided the Government and Judiciary with the Centre telling the court that the idea must be dropped at the threshold even as the court wants a Constitution Bench to debate on whether the proposal could be the panacea to curb pendency of cases.
Posting the matter to Thursday for referring the case to a Constitution Bench, the bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justices R Banumathi and UU lalit found support from senior advocate KK Venugopal assisting as amicus curiae. The National Court of Appeal, Venugopal said, would decide all regular appeals from High Courts, thus leaving Supreme Court with more time to decide on constitutional issues.
The Centre, however, in its submissions to court felt there was nothing to be decided in this petition arising out of a Madras High Court decision disallowing the idea of National Court of Appeal. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said “Court’s docket is already full. It should not be entertained. All that it (NCA) will do is to add to lawyers’ pockets. Moreover, the problem of backlog is in trial courts, around two crore cases. How will NCA remedy thisIJ”
The Bench asked A-G, “You do not want even a debate on this issue.” With Rohatgi refusing to play ball, the bench in a lighter vein remarked, “I hope your view is not like the one you (Centre) took on returning Kohinoor. Although initially you (Centre) said it cannot be returned we asked you to consider. Similarly we can ask you in this case.”
Venugopal had brought material to show that such experiment had worked in foreign jurisdictions. Moreover, he pointed out that access to justice was a serious concern as only negligible amount of cases from far south or east travel in appeal to apex court. The Bench sought to dismiss Centre’s reservations by saying that all it wanted was a debate on whether it is needed. “We are not taking a final view nor are we going to amend the Constitution. We are only opening a debate, which at one point of time was started by you (Centre).”