Congress today downplayed the issue of the Supreme Court questioning the CBI for delay in filing appeal against the Allahabad High Court order that conspiracy charge will not apply to BJP leader L K Advani and others in the Babri Masjid demolition case.
Party spokesperson Renuka Chowdhary said that a number of cases are pending before courts, whose disposal take years and the Supreme Court "knows why the cases are delayed".
"We look at the Supreme Court with great respect... But a number of complaints come to me as well that cases are pending before courts for five years, ten years. They have so many pending cases before them. The Supreme Court is aware why the cases are delayed," Chowdhary said.
A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice H L Dattu earlier directed that an affidavit be filed within two weeks by a senior law officer of the central government after noting that the delay of 167 days was caused because of a law officer.
The apex court was hearing CBI's appeal challenging the verdicts of a special CBI court and the Allahabad High Court dropping conspiracy charge against Advani, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar and Murli Manohar Joshi.
The others against whom the charge was dropped included Satish Pradhan, C R Bansal, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Sadhvi Ritambhara, V H Dalmia, Mahant Avaidhynath, R V Vedanti, Param Hans Ram Chandra Das, Jagdish Muni Maharaj, B L Sharma, Nritya Gopal Das, Dharam Das, Satish Nagar and Moreshwar Save.
