Prayagraj: Citing the Supreme Court’s mandamus, the Allahabad high court has directed its registry to stop using terms like “court below” and “lower court” in official records, stating that these phrases are not correct legal terminology.Justice Abdul Shahid, while deciding a criminal appeal, ordered that records must instead use “trial court” or name the specific court concerned.In his judgment dated April 24, Justice Shahid referred to the SC’s 2024 verdict, which stressed that describing any court as a “lower court” was against the ethos of the Constitution.The Supreme Court had observed, “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 the lower court record (LCR). Instead, it should be referred to as the trial court record (TCR). The registrar (judicial) should take note of this order.”“In view of the aforesaid order passed by the Supreme Court, the terminology ‘court below’ may be replaced with ‘trial court’ or theconcerned court, as in the present case, is the special court under the SC/ST Act,” Justice Shahid added.The high court was essentially dealing with a plea challenging a summoning order as well as the criminal proceedings in a case registered under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
