Evening courts will be open from 6 to 8 pm……..Vishwas Kothari
Pune: The state department for law and judiciary (L&J) has released the rules for establishing evening courts to deal with cases under specified enactments, including the Negotiable Instruments (NI) Act.
The move is part of the effort to reduce the pendency of cases at district and subordinate courts. To establish a sustainable model for a situation where the courts work in double shifts, principal secretary to state L & J department, M N Gilani, issued the notification on August 3 specifying the rulestitled the Maharashtra Evening Courts Rules, 2009.
Under supervision of the Bombay high court, the evening courts, to be established in various districts, will function from 6 pm to 8 pm every day, barring holidays. The focus will be on cases under Section 138 of the NI Act (cheque return cases) besides the summary trials of petty matters under the CrPC and any other case transferred with consent of parties to the dispute.
According to legal expert Sureshchandra Bhosale, Despite a fairly good rate of disposal of the NI Act cases, there is a huge gap in the disposal and the corresponding proportion of cases that keep flooding the judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) courts.
Cities like Pune have witnessed a rise in the number of NI Act cases owing to the flourishing bank loan and finance business. Usually, financing institutions collect postdated cheques against the loan extended to their clients and end up filing the cheque return cases in bulk against the defaulters..
Harshad Nimbalkar, former chairman of BCMG, said, The only hitch evening courts may face is the reluctance of lawyers to work during evening hours. Lawyers have to work through the day and have their own office hours in the evening.