Supreme Court: In an intervention application filed for seeking further appropriate directions and clarifications on expiry of period of one year for which Special Courts were constituted under Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (‘NI Act’) for conducting trials under Section 138 of the NI Act, the three Judge Bench of B.R. Gavai, Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Prashant Kumar Mishra, JJ. allowed the application and listed the matter for hearing on 16-10-2023.
The Court in a suo motu petition for expeditious trial of cases under Section 138 of the NI Act, vide order dated 19-05-2022, directed for creation of Special Courts as a pilot study for a period of one year from 01-09-2022 to 31-08-2023. The pilot study was suggested to test the scheme of employing retired judicial officers and retired Court staff to operationalise these Special Courts in the five states with the highest pendency of cases namely, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
In the matter at hand, as per the intervention application the period of one year has expired on 31-08-2023 and no further order/direction/clarification has been passed by the Court after 01-09-2023. In the event of no further order/direction/clarification, the pending proceedings before the Special Courts would be transferred back to their parent Court, wherein it would further take time for final adjudication and cause irreparable loss to the applicant and persons who are similarly situation. The present applicant had filed cases under Section 138 of the NI Act before the Metropolitan Magistrate, Patiala House Court in the year 2016, which were transferred to the Special Court (NI Act) under the Pilot Study. The proceedings for the applicant’s case were listed for the remaining final argument on 06-09-2023. However, the said period of one year for which the Special Courts were constituted expired on 31-08-2023 and hence, the hearings were stalled. Further, the Delhi High Court through its notification dated 01-09-2023, directed to transfer back all the matters to their parent Court in the absence of any direction/clarification from the Court.
The Court listed the matter for hearing on 16-10-2023.
[In Re Expeditious Trial of Cases Under Section 138 of N.I. Act 1881, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1197, Order Dated: 20-09-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the respondents: Advocate Pawan Reley, Advocate Gaurav Kumar, Advocate on Record (‘AOR’) Vinod Sharma, AOR Gaurav Agrawal, AOR Sachin Patil, AOR Sibo Sankar Mishra, AOR S. Udaya Kumar Sagar, AOR Naresh K. Sharma, AOR M. Yogesh Kanna, AOR Vinay Garg, AOR Radhika Gautam, AOR G. Prakash, AOR Dr. Joseph Aristotle S., AOR Satish Pandey, AOR Dr. Monika Gusain, AOR Kunal Chatterji, AOR Ms. Ruchira Goel, AOR Himanshu Shekhar, AOR Narendra Kumar, AOR Sameer Parekh, AOR Sumeer Sodhi, AOR Ms. Christi Jain, AOR Ms. Jaspreet Gogia, AOR Pai Amit, AOR Gurmeet Singh Makker, AOR Ramesh Babu M. R., AOR Pukhrambam Ramesh Kumar, M/S. Plr Chambers And Co., AOR Mukesh K. Giri, AOR Shubhranshu Padhi, AOR Anando Mukherjee, AOR Apoorv Kurup, AOR Saurabh Trivedi, AOR Abhimanyu Tewari, AOR Romy Chacko, AOR Ms. K. Enatoli Sema, AOR Prashant Shrikant Kenjale, M/S. Arputham Aruna And Co, AOR Sanjai Kumar Pathak, AOR Abhishek Atrey, AOR Malak Manish Bhatt, AOR Gopal Jha, AOR V. N. Raghupathy, AOR Manish Kumar, AOR Aravindh S., AOR R. Nedumaran, AOR Ms. Pragati Neekhra, AOR Avijit Mani Tripathi, AOR Ms. Taruna Ardhendumauli Prasad, M/S. Parekh & Co., AOR V. K. Biju, AOR Shuvodeep Roy, AOR Shibashish Misra, AOR Shree Pal Singh, AOR G. Indira, AOR Raj Bahadur Yadav, AOR Uttara Babbar, AOR Vishwa Pal Singh, AOR Mahesh Thakur, AOR P. V. Yogeswaran, AOR Ms. Enakshi Mukhopadhyay Siddhanta, AOR Arjun Garg, AOR Anupam Raina, AOR Nirnimesh Dube, AOR Ms. Aswathi M.k., AOR Maibam Nabaghanashyam Singh, AOR Ms. Manisha Ambwani, AOR Apoorv Shukla, AOR Samir Ali Khan, AOR Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki, AOR Pradeep Misra
*Deeksha Dabas, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.
