For the first time, the Supreme Court has decided to explore the possibility of establishing a National Court of Appeal in each State or region for deciding appeals that arise straight from the High Courts.
The proposal forms part of a PIl filed by a Puducherry-based lawyer V Vasanthkumar who has backed his claim with two law Commission reports and a decision by the apex court in 1986 which emphasised that the top court in the country should not become a regular court of appeal but a court that decides only questions arising out of Constitutional law and Public law.
The Bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justices R Banumathi and UU lalit gave permission to the petitioner to join Centre to his petition and issued notice seeking response from the Government by March 15. Since the issue deals with conceiving a new tier in the judicial administration system, the Bench sought assistance of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi and two other eminent lawyers KK Venugopal and Salman Khurshid.
The petitioner presented his own reasons to suggest that a time had come to have a National Court of Appeal (NCA) with benches in all possible regions of the country to reduce the cost of litigation since litigants have to hire a new set of lawyers at exorbitant rates to argue their case in SC. The NCA, as envisaged by the petitioner would entertain appeals by Special leave against decisions of the HCs and Tribunals across the country, thus reducing the load of cases in SC.
The proposal of the petitioner did not meet favour of the law Ministry, which after consulting the Attorney General, dismissed Vasanthkumar’s representation on December 3, 2014. It was in November 2014, that the SC directed the Centre to decide on Vasanthkumar’s representation.
The law Commission in its 125th report made a recommendation for a Federal Court of Appeal with Benches in North, South, East, West and Central regions of the country. Again in its 229th report, the law Commission advised setting up of four Cassation Benches in the four regions that can deal with all appeals arising out of orders/judgments passed by HCs of the particular region.