Nainital: The Uttarakhand High Court has taken suo motu cognisance of pendency of criminal cases against MPs and MLAs in the state and sought a reply from the government in two weeks. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari and Justice Vivek Bharti Sharma directed the state government to provide information about the number of criminal cases registered against MPs and MLAs in the state and their pendency.
The court granted two weeks to the state government to file its reply.
The court had taken cognizance of the instructions given by the Supreme Court earlier too in this regard but till now the government has not provided the list of pending cases against MLAs and MPs in the court, it said.
Following the Supreme Court order, the court again took cognizance of this matter on Wednesday.
In August 2021, the Supreme Court had directed all high courts to conduct speedy hearing of the criminal cases pending against MPs and MLAs.
The Supreme Court had observed that state governments are withdrawing the cases of their MPs and MLAs by misusing Section 321 of the IPC.
It had cited the examples of Uttar Pradesh government withdrawing the cases of Muzaffarnagar riot accused Sadhvi Prachi and Sangeet Som despite the apex court order against the withdrawal of such cases without the permission of the high court.
The Supreme Court had also instructed the high courts to form a special court for speedy disposal of such cases. —PTI a
