Debangana Ray
Published on July 26, 2022 at 21:46 IST
The Delhi High Court has sought response of the Delhi Government on filling up of vacancies of prosecutors, along with the steps taken to grant higher pay scale to them.
A division bench comprising of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad was dealing with a suo moto case initiated by the Court in the year 2009 after a letter petition was moved highlighting the issue of undertrials languishing in jail from 5 to 12 years without a trial.
During the recent course of hearing on July 21, amicus curiae Senior Advocate Rajeev K Virmani apprised the Court about the progress of the issues raised in the matter and milestones achieved from time to time.
Virmani submitted that during his studies and visits to city’s district courts, he found various lacunae, one of which was an acute shortage of prosecutors in trial courts.
He told the Court that there was one prosecutor for every three courts and that it was found that there were no library or book facilities for prosecutors.
The Judge opined that, “Second milestone achieved was e-libraries. The Court directed the Government to look into it and the government provided prosecutors with laptop and and subscription to e-libraries.”
He also added that on the issue of infrastructure, while some work was done, however, there was no status report showing the current status of seating infrastructure for prosecutors in courts.
As Justice Virmani raised the issue of backlog of vacancies of prosecutors, the Delhi Government sought time to seek further instructions in the matter.
In December 2019, the Court had directed that the recruitment process for the posts of Assistant Public Prosecutors as well as for the recruitment of Additional Public Prosecutors shall be carried out in accordance with the recruitment rules.
The Court directed that, “Learned counsel for GNCTD shall file the Status Report in respect of the vacancies of the Prosecutors and the steps taken by them to fill up those vacancies. The Status Report shall also include the steps taken by them for grant of higher pay scale.”
It added “The Union of India and the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) shall also file their replies as directed by order dated 16.12.2019, if not filed so far.”
The matter will now be heard on September 16.