Lessons from a verdict

Three conclusions may be drawn from the Supreme Court >ruling that the Tamil Nadu government did not have the jurisdiction to appoint a Special Public Prosecutor to handle the appeals filed by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Fears that the disposal of the appeals made in the Karnataka High Court by Ms. Jayalalithaa and her three associates against their four-year jail term would be delayed have been allayed, as the three-judge Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra has ruled out a de novo hearing. The Karnataka government has now brought back B.V. Acharya, who had earlier vigorously prosecuted the case but was >forced to resign, to represent it while filing its submissions before the High Court. The Supreme Court’s reminder to the High Court that corruption has a “corroding effect”, that it is the duty of an appellate judge to scrutinise objectively the evidence on record in its entirety and that his reasoning ought to be “resolutely expressed”, may cause some anxiety to the defence as to whether there is any implicit direction to the High Court to decide the matter in a particular manner.