Sharma to head CA court

This is a bit old news that we failed to publish earlier. Kantipur reports here that Justice Anup Raj Sharma will head the Constituent Assembly Election Court. This court is being created under Interim Constitution of Nepal and the jurisdiction of this court will be to hear any matters in relation to disputes that may arise in Constituent Assembly Election. We will be publishing the power and jurisdiction of CA Court in our another post and also about Justice Sharma.

 

The Judicial Council (JC) on Sunday recommended the government to appoint Supreme Court (SC) Justice Anup Raj Sharma as the chairman of the Constituent Assembly Court.

Similarly, JC recommended the name of Supreme Court Justices Tap Bahadur Magar and Ram Kumar Prasad Sah as the members of the court, according to JC Spokesperson Nahakul Subedi.

A meeting of JC headed by Chief Justice Kedar Prasad Giri took the decision on Sunday after the government requested the JC to recommend the judges for the court. The government told the JC that it is going to announce the inception of the court soon.

The Interim Constitution has provisioned that there will be a separate court to take up cases and crimes relating to the election to the Constituent Assembly.

Similarly, the JC has recommended the government to appoint Subedi, joint secretary at JC, as the registrar of the court.

In the meantime, the JC meeting also decided to allow the Election Commission (EC) to deploy 95 district judges, including 20 additional district judges, as the chief election officers across the country, according to Subedi. Likewise, a meeting of the Judicial Service Commission decided to allow the EC to use 240 officials under the judicial service in the upcoming election.

contempt of court

Here is the report by Kiran Chapagain of Kantipur about Supreme Court’s verdict on contempt of court. I am planning to write a small article on this point and we feel that the SC has done a good thing to keep its image clean and not to lose confidence among people. The attempts to tarnish the image of Court is completely unacceptable and such elements must be prosecuted and given appropriate penalty. It will be good when SC starts punishing court officials and staffs involved in corruption as that also keeps the judiciary’s image very clean.

The Supreme Court (SC) on Sunday convicted 17 people on contempt of court charge and slapped three months of imprisonment and Rs 1,000 in fine against them.

The convicts were arrested from the Supreme Court premises on January 17 after they chanted slogans against judges inside the court chamber where a hearing on the case relating to Chamati Land Project was on progress.

“The act of the accused did contempt not only to this bench but also to the independent judiciary of Nepal,” Justices Bal Ram KC and Tap Bahadur Magar said while announcing the punishment.

The Justices ruled that though the jail term for the convicts is three months, two months of the term has been suspended, and won’t be enforced if the convicts show good behavior. The judges said that they would have to serve the term in two installments.

“They be released after 15 days since their arrest. They be then summoned to be present before the court on the 75th day since their arrest. Then they will again be sent to the jail to serve the remaining 15 days of imprisonment. They be sent to the jail for three months if they do not present themselves before the court [on the 75th day],” the judges ordered.

The order means that the convicts will be released after four days (Thursday) since they have already served 11 days in detention.

The court took such a step against the people though they pleaded innocence before the court. The court, however, refuted their plea.

While handing down the verdict, the court also said that no one has the leverage of doing contempt to the judiciary either by writing, speaking or by any means.

“Any act that spreads falsehood against this court is considered criminal contempt,” the bench ruled.

Legal experts said this is the first time the court has found such a large number of people guilty of contempt of court at one time.