NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is set to take up on October 31 a PIL by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay for a direction to the Centre, States and UTs to establish special anti-corruption courts in every district of the country.
Such a court would decide the cases relating to black money, benami property, bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, profiteering, hoarding, adulteration, human and drug trafficking, black marketing, cheating, fraud, forgery, dishonest misappropriation of property, disproportionate assets, falsification of account, corporate fraud, forensic fraud, illegal foreign exchange and other economic offences within one year.
A bench of Chief Justice U U Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Trivedi would consider the PIL by Upadhyay on October 31.
The petitioner has alternatively asked the court, being protector of fundamental rights, to direct the High Courts to take appropriate steps to decide such cases within one year.
His plea claimed due to long pendency and ineffective anti-corruption laws, India has never been ranked even among top 50 in Corruption Perception Index and the Centre-States have not taken appropriate steps to weed-out the menace of corruption, which brazenly offends rule of law as well as right to life liberty dignity guaranteed under Articles 14. Due to long pendency of cases and week anti-corruption laws, none of the welfare schemes and government departments are corruption-free.
The petitioner contended the injury caused to people is extremely large because corruption is an insidious plague, having numerous corrosive effects on society.
"It undermines democracy and rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes quality of life and allows organized crime like separatism, terrorism, naxalism, radicalism, gambling, smuggling, kidnapping, money laundering and extortion, and other threats to human security to flourish. It hurts the EWS-BPL families disproportionately by diverting the funds intended for development, undermines government’s ability to provide basic services, seeds inequality and injustice and discourages foreign aids and investment," his plea said.
"Corruption is key element in economic underperformance and main obstacle in poverty alleviation. Right to life and liberty guaranteed under Article 21 cannot be secured and the golden goals of Preamble cannot be achieved without curbing corruption," it claimed.
Upadhyay suggested five steps to
weed-out corruption and black money generation.
"Cash transaction in high value currency is used for illegal activities - terrorism, naxalism, separatism, radicalism, gambling, smuggling, money laundering, kidnapping, extortion, bribing and dowry etc. It also inflates price of essential commodities as well as major assets like real estate, gold etc. Hence, these problems can be curbed up to a great extent by recalling currency above Rs 100/-, restricting cash transaction above Rs. 5000/-, linking assets above Rs. 50,000/- with AADHAAR, confiscating cent percent black money, benami property and disproportionate assets and awarding life imprisonment," he said in his plea.
The petitioner also stated the root cause of 50% problems is corruption and it can’t be controlled without tax reform police reform judicial reform administrative reform and legal reform.
"Many eminent commissions including the Law Commission Election Commission Venkatchaliah Commission and Administrative Commission have given more than 500 suggestions to weed-out corruption and secure the democracy but Centre did nothing to implement them. Black money coming into banking system will bring along with massive data, a treasure-trove that would enable the Centre to take action against looters and Ill-gotten wealth will be part of economy," he said.
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