A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in Delhi High Court today seeking direction to the Law Commission of India to prepare a comprehensive report on Uniform Judicial Code.
As per the consultation with the High Courts in order to make judicial terms, abbreviations, norms, phrases, court fee structure, and case registration process uniform.
The plea has been moved by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a BJP Leader, who states that alternately Court may constitute an Expert Committee to prepare a comprehensive report on Uniform Judicial Code.
Therefore, the plea stated that the terminology used by the 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 the writ petitions among different High Courts across the country, no uniformity is found in terms of terminologies and their respective abbreviations which are in practice for writ petitions in different high courts of the country.
The plea states that in the case of the Delhi High Court, no description of the abbreviations used is mentioned on the official website of the High Court of Delhi.
Plea stated that for virtual hearings there is no uniform set of procedures that is being followed across various high courts.
Further, 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’.
Further, the plea read that the unequal court fees in different states discriminate among citizens based on their place of birth and residence.
