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| Suffrage universel dédié à Ledru-Rollin, Frédéric Sorrieu, 1850 |
Recently, the honorable Supreme Court of
India passed a very important verdict on the trials relating to MPs/MLAs. The
Order directed that in relation to sitting MPs and MLAs who have charges framed
against them for the offences which are specified in Section 8 (1), 8 (2) and 8
(3) of the RP Act, the trial shall be concluded as speedily and expeditiously
as may be possible and in no case later than one year from the date of the
framing of charges. In such cases, as far as possible, the trial shall be
conducted on a day-to-day basis. If for some extraordinary circumstances the concerned
court is being not able to conclude the trial within the one year from the date
of framing of charges, such court would submit the report to the Chief Justice
of the respective High Court indicating special reasons for not adhering to the
above time limit and delay in conclusion of the trial.
This order was also based on the
244th report of the Law Commission. On the one hand, we see that it
is a welcome order since it attempts to decriminalize the political scenario of
our country by speedily disposing off the trials relating to the politicians.
It will certainly give teeth to the previous verdict of the Supreme Court in
the Lily Thomas Case.
It has been long argued that
politicians have a big panel of advocates in such cases and they try to take
advantage of every single procedure or technicality involved in the case. This prolongs the trial and sometimes, the
trial has gone even for 15-20 years. Thus, putting a time limit for disposal of
such cases is definitely a welcome step.
However, on the other hand there
are few peculiar things that must be observed in this regard. Let us first look
into Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Section 309 (1) - Power to postpone
or adjourn proceedings - In every inquiry or trial, the proceedings shall be
held as expeditiously as possible, and in particular, when the examination of
witnesses has once begun, the same shall be continued from day to day until all
the witnesses in attendance have been examined, unless the Court finds the
adjournment of the same beyond the following day to be necessary for reasons to
be recorded.
We see that provisions for speedy
trials already exist in our laws. CrPC clearly states that once the examination
of witnesses begins, the same shall be continued on a day-to-day basis until
all the witnesses have been examined. Thus, the court has merely re-iterated
what was obvious from this section. Also, the Supreme Court has held that under
article 21, speedy trial is a fundamental right. Thus, putting a one year time
limit does not seem to be a novel exercise in this regard.
In fact, I find this order of the
court to be quite regressive in nature. Day-to-day conduct of trial and speedy
disposal of cases is a fundamental right available to all the citizenry of this
country. By not extending this order to all the citizens of this country, the
court has once again proved that its doors are open only for the rich and powerful.
The privilege of speedy trial in this case is only extended to the MPs and
MLAs.
Also, what about the right to
equality that the court has so vehemently tried to protect in the previous
years. A poor person under trial will continue to languish in the rotten jails
of our country. Whereas the rich and powerful MLAs and MPs will have their
trial finished within one year.
It could be argued that the
intention of the honorable court was noble in this case i.e. to restrict the abuse of the
process of the court by the politicians. However, by restricting this order
only to the MLAs and MPs, once again a mockery has been made of the poor and the
underprivileged section of the society. The people, the court, the politicians
and the media like to only talk about the emancipation and upliftment of the poor
and underprivileged people, in reality, none of them are interested in taking
the actual corrective actions.
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