Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 11: Taking serious note of inordinate delay in posting of prosecutors in the seven courts of Additional District and Sessions Judge designated to handle the corruption cases, Division Bench of High Court comprising Chief Justice M M Kumar and Justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar today issued notice to Chief Minister, Chief Secretary and others.
The notice was issued by the Division Bench after going through the fresh Civil Miscellaneous Application (CMA) filed by petitioner Prof S K Bhalla through Advocate S S Ahmad.
After going through the CMA, Chief Justice, in the open court, asked Senior Additional Advocate General, Gagan Basotra to explain the stance of the Government on this grave issue. Mr Basotra, however, said that Public Prosecutors have been provided to these seven courts.
Challenging this, Advocate Ahmad said, “these seven courts have not been able to dispose of corruption cases in the absence of prosecuting agency as such the objective behind the designation of these courts could not be achieved till date”.
After hearing both the sides, the DB issued notice to Chief Minister, Chief Secretary and Commissioner Secretaries of GAD and Law with the direction to file response to the CMA within one week.
On the request of counsel for the PIL, Division Bench added State Vigilance Commission through its Registrar as respondent and issued notice to the Commission with the direction to file status report with regard to vacancy position and any step taken in this direction.
It is pertinent to mention here that EXCELSIOR today exclusively reported that courts designated to handle corruption cases have not been provided prosecuting officers due to which thousands of cases are pending in these courts.
These courts had been empowered to handle corruption cases in order to lessen the work load on two designated courts of anti-corruption at Jammu and Srinagar.
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