SC to hold day-to-day hearing on Jayalalithaa assets case

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will hold day-to-day hearing of the Karnataka government's appeal against the Karnataka High Court verdict acquitting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case.

While saying it would hold day-to-day hearing of Karnataka's appeal, the apex court bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice R.K. Agarawal asked counsel for the Karnataka government and Jayalalithaa to flag the issues they would like the court to address in the course of the hearing of the matter.

The court gave same liberty to senior DMK leader K. Anbazhagan and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who are complainant and intervener respectively in the case.

Directing the next hearing of the matter to be slated for January 8 when all the parties collectively or individually submit their issue for the consideration by the court, the bench said it would the decide the dates for commencing the day-to-day hearing.

Karnataka on June 23 moved the apex court challenging the high court's May 11 verdict acquitting Jayalalithaa, her aide N. Sasikala Natrajan and two others in her disproportionate assets case.

Assailing the error in calculating the disproportionate assets of Jayalalithaa by the high court, the Karnataka government contended that the reversal of the trial court verdict convicting Jayalalithaa has resulted in "miscarriage of justice".

The Karnataka government in its petition has also said that besides other infirmities in the high court verdict, the "grave mistake" in total of ten loans has "resulted in the acquittal (of Jayalalithaa and others) instead of an order confirming the conviction".

Besides serious errors in the totalling of 10 loans by the high court, the Karnataka government has questioned whether Jayalalithaa's appeal against trial court verdict convicting her and others in the case was maintainable without making it (Karnataka) a respondent.

The state government has contended that because Jayalalithaa, Sasikala and two others did not make the Karnataka government a party to the case, it could not appoint a public prosecutor to pursue the case and the state went unrepresented.

A trial court in Bangaluru convicted Jayalalithaa on September 27, 2014, for possessing assets disproportionate to her known sources of income and sentenced her to four-year jail term and a Rs.100 crore fine. The case lasted for about 18 years.

The DA case against Jayalalithaa and three others related to the period from 1991 to 1996 involving Rs.66.65 crore when she became chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the first time.