The Delhi High Court on Tuesday refused to hear a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction to the Law Commission of India to prepare a comprehensive report on the Uniform Judicial Code in consultation with high courts order to make judicial terms, abbreviations, norms, phrases, court fee structure and case registration process uniform.
The bench of Justice Satish Chander Sharma and Justice Yashwant Varma on Tuesday asked the petitioner to seek clarification of the Supreme Court order which had “dismissed his plea as withdrawn.” The Bench noted that in the Supreme Court, the same petition was “dismissed as withdrawn” earlier and nothing is written in that order about the petitioner granting liberty to move to Delhi High Court.
The plea was moved by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a BJP leader, who stated that alternately court may constitute an expert committee to prepare a comprehensive report on the Uniform Judicial Code.
Plea stated that the terminology used by different High courts for different types of cases is not uniform. This non-uniformity causes inconvenience not just to the general public but, in many cases, to the advocates and the authorities as well.
In the categorization of cases under writ petition among different high courts across the country, no uniformity is found in terms of the terminologies and their respective abbreviations which are in practice for writ petitions in different high courts of the country. In the case of the high court of delhi, no description of the abbreviations used is mentioned on the official website of the High Court of Delhi, stated the plea.
A plea stated that for a virtual hearing there is no uniform set of procedures, which is being followed across various high courts.
Judicial equality is a matter of constitutional right, its differentiation based on the jurisdiction of courts violates the right to equality enshrined under Article 14 which states that ‘the state shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within India’ and article 15 which states that ‘the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them’. Unequal court fees in different states discriminate among citizens based on their place of birth and residence, read the plea (ANI)
