National appeals court to create problems: Govt

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, April 28

The Centre today opposed in the Supreme Court a PIL plea for setting up a National Court of Appeals (NCA) with benches in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata to function as the final court for cases not involving constitutional issues that accounted for about 80 per cent of appeals.

Arguing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi contended that NCA would only create an unnecessary additional layer and cause further delays in the disposal of cases.

Litigants had a right to move the SC and as such they could not be stopped at the level of NCA by declaring SC as a court meant only for cases involving constitutional issues. Even if this was done, every litigant would consciously introduce a constitutional aspect in his case so that he could come up to the SC, Rohatgi said.

The Bench, which included Justices R Banumathi and UU Lalit, was hearing the PIL by advocate V Vasanthakumar. Senior advocates KK Venugopal and TR Andyarujina, who were appointed as amicus curiae by the Bench, however favoured the idea of NCA.

The Bench said it was prepared to dispose of the case if the Centre was willing to have the proposal discussed at the national level. Rohatgi suggested that the Law Commission could be asked to undertake the exercise. The Bench, however, said the commission had already given two reports favouring such a court. But the AG said the two reports were only based on Article 130 under which SC could have regional benches.

Rohatgi said the best way to discourage frivolous litigants from moving the SC was to impost hefty fines for doing so. The Bench pointed out that most of the appeals lying in the SC were filed by government departments such as income tax, excise and state-owned companies.

The Bench reserved its order on the need for sending the PIL to a Constitution Bench.