Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the Centre for not being able to furnish the details of MPs and MLAs, who have criminal records against them, before it, according to an ANI report. The Apex Court’s observation came during the hearing of a petition, which was moved to seek its direction to establish special courts. The plea stated that the special courts should be set up to expeditiously try criminal cases registered against the lawmakers and legislators respectively. The Supreme Court had asked the Centre to file its detailed response by September 5 which is the next hearing date for the matter.

Last year, the Supreme Court had asked the central government to consider legislating on setting up of new fast-track courts to expedite criminal case trials against parliamentarians and legislators. The top court had then said that the parliament was eligible to bring a new law and create the necessary infrastructure for setting up of such courts for speedy disposal of cases against lawmakers.

Recently, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) in its report disclosed that 45 MLAs and 3 MPs have declared cases related to crime against women. The crimes against women include charges related to the assault of woman with intent to outrage her modesty, kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her to marriage, rape, domestic violence and trafficking, as per the Delhi-based think-tank report.

According to the report, BJP has the highest number of MPs and MLAs i.e, 12, followed by Shiv Sena (7) and Trinamool Congress (6) who have declared cases related to crime against women. The report was based on an analysis of 4,845 out of 4,896 election affidavits of current MPs and MLAs. This includes 768 out of 776 affidavits of MPs and 4,077 out of 4,120 MLAs across the country.