National Court Of Appeal : Will The Centre Give Wings To New AG's Dreams ?

The Centre and the Supreme Court are reportedly deliberating on establishment of Courts of Appeal. According to the Economic Times  report, the idea was mooted at a recent top-level meeting attended by senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Cabinet Secretary, and Secretaries from Ministries of Finance, Department of Personnel and Training, and Niti Aayog. Two Supreme Court Judges represented the Apex Court at the meeting.

According to the proposal, Appeals from District Courts in all civil and criminal cases will be heard by these Courts of Appeal, which will be placed higher than District Courts, but below High Courts. The High Courts will only hear core constitutional matters.

 “Delay in decision of criminal cases, particularly in category of serious cases where granting bail was not safe, was not a satisfactory situation, search for structural alternative was the imperative need of the hour,” the minutes of the meeting reportedly said.

The issue of establishment of National Courts of Appeal (NCA) was earlier mulled over by the Supreme Court as well, after which, the matter was referred to a Constitution Bench by a three-Judge Bench.

The order was issued on a PIL filed by Puducherry-based Advocate V. Vasantha Kumar, who had sought setting up of NCA with regional Benches. He had submitted, “…distance of the apex court in National Capital from other parts of the country, coupled with high travel expense and cost of litigation were coming in way of citizens from far flung areas to approach the top court of the land, which is otherwise also burdened with large scale pendency of cases.”

Interestingly, the hearings of the PIL had witnessed amicus curiaes K.K. Venugopal (KKV) and T.R. Andhyarujina vehemently supporting the idea, and Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi opposing it as a “self-defeating exercise”.

The Centre now seems to have had a change of heart, with reports of this high level meeting on the issue. Its recent change of tune may well be speculated to be attributed to KKV, who recently assumed charge as the Attorney General, and has been a staunch supporter of the idea long before advocating it before the Court, as is evident from his landmark Jain Memorial Lecture on the subject “Towards a holistic restructuring of the Supreme Court of India”.

“I suggest that instead of adding more judges to the Supreme Court of India, one should create four Regional or Zonal Courts of Appeal which would absorb the 140 categories of cases which are today pending in the Supreme Court of India being matrimonial, rent control, labour, service, land acquisition and other such like cases. These cases would belong to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeal which would be established in the four regions of the country,” he had suggested during the lecture.

Subsequently, in an op-ed in The Hindu titled, “Towards a true Constitutional Court”, KKV had re-iterated his stand, emphasizing on the need for creation of Courts of Appeal, opining that restricting the Supreme Court to its true function as a Constitutional Court has become imperative.