Home Economy Dishonoured cheques cases clutter up courts in Delhi

Dishonoured cheques cases clutter up courts in Delhi

By Kanu Sarda, IANS

New Delhi : Lawyers in the capital have called for separate courts to dispose of petty issues like bounced cheques and fines for traffic violations as they add most to the backlog of pending cases.

Cases related to dishonoured cheques have increased many-fold in the city, and as many as 3,56,394 cases pertaining to Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act are pending in Delhi, according to the latest annual report of the Delhi district courts.

“Most of the time, courts are held up in disposing of the cases of cheque bounce. Not only this, the amount in most cases is even less than a thousand rupees. The only solution to stop this is an early settlement by means of Lok Adalats organised by the Delhi Legal Service Authority,” said Ramesh Gupta, a criminal lawyer.

The act dealing with complaints of dishonoured cheques came into existence in 1995 and ever since a large number of people have resorted to legal action under it. “These types of cases take a lot of time to settle and as a result the case lingers on for years,” added Gupta.

There are 70,474 cases related to bounced cheques in the Tis Hazari courts, 147,097 cases at the Patiala House courts, 101,275 cases in the Karkardooma courts and 37,548 cases in the Rohini courts.

“The main reason for the increasing number of cheque-bounce cases is the emergence of more and more banks and commercial establishments. Many people unaware of the technicalities fall in the trap and cannot repay the loans or their cheque gets returned,” said Ashish Kulshrestha, a criminal law expert who deals with such cases.

The Delhi Legal Service Authority recently held lok adalats in various district courts, especially to deal with such cases.

“As many as 100,000 of such cases were solved then and the lok adalats received an enormous response. So we have decided to have such courts every year to solve the petty issues like traffic challans and cheque bounce cases,” said Sangeeta Dhingra, secretary of the Delhi Legal Service Authority.