Jayalalithaa appeal: How Karnataka will fight in Supreme Court

Updated: Tuesday, June 2, 2015, 15:21 [IST]

Bengaluru, June 2: The Karnataka law department is giving final touches to the appeal to be filed before the Supreme Court in connection with the J Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets case.

The government, which decided to continue with the services of senior counsel B V Acharya will, however, not appoint him as a special public prosecutor. Instead, he would be appointed as a special counsel to argue the case on behalf of the state of Karnataka in the Supreme Court.

Straight forward appeal:

Sources who are part of the appeal filing process tell OneIndia that the main emphasis would be on the arithmetic errors committed by Justice Kumaraswamy while delivering the verdict of acquittal against Jayalalithaa and her aides.

As per the opinion given by both Acharya who was the special public prosecutor in the case and the Advocate General the judge had erred while calculating the quantum of the disproportionate assets. A calculation error had brought down the quantum to less than 10 percent as a result of which the case resulted in an acquittal.

While the law permits the court to correct clerical and arithmetic errors, it however does permit altering the final result of the verdict. Legal experts had stated that Justice Kumaraswamy would not be able to make these corrections in the verdict and if he had done so, then it would have resulted in the alteration of the verdict.

Karnataka was not a party:

The second line of argument in the appeal is that Karnataka the prosecuting state was not made a party in the appeal. The appeal states that Karnataka was made the prosecuting state by the Supreme Court when the case was transferred from Tamil Nadu.

However, during the course of the hearing in the High Court, Karntaka was neither heard nor made a party. This is a serious defect and an order could not have been passed without hearing the prosecuting state. Making the prosecuting state or agency is a legal mandate.

Jayalalithaa's legal team was given two months time to advance arguments, but no prosecutor authorised by Karnataka was present during such arguments. Karnataka was not given a chance to put forth arguments. Even the Special Public Prosecutor's appointment (Bhavani Singh) was struck down as illegal by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court gave Karnataka only a day's time to advance arguments. Moreover the directive was to make written submissions. This is a lengthy case and written submissions to be filed in a day's time was not sufficient, Karnataka will also argue.

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