SC directs its registry to stop using the term ‘lower courts’ for trial courts

PTI, Feb 11, 2024, 12:04 PM IST

The Supreme Court has asked its registry to stop referring to trial courts as ‘lower courts’.

The apex court said even the record of trial courts should not be referred to as ‘lower court record’.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan passed the order while hearing a plea filed by two persons challenging the Allahabad High Court verdict which dismissed their appeal against conviction and life sentence awarded to them in a murder case of 1981.

”It will be appropriate if the registry of this court stops referring to the trial courts as ‘lower courts’. Even the record of the trial court should not be referred to as lower court record (LCR). Instead, it should be referred as the trial court record (TCR). The registrar (judicial) to take a note of this order,” the bench said in its order passed on February 8.

The top court asked its registry to call for the soft copy of trial court record of the case concerned and posted the matter for hearing on August 6.

The two petitioners have challenged the October 2018 order of the high court which dismissed their appeals and asked them to surrender fore the court concerned to serve the remainder sentence.

They had approached the high court challenging the verdict of a trial court convicting and sentencing them to life imprisonment in the case.