But then I must concede that there is considerable substance in the arguments of Dr. Ambedkar and Mr. Munshi as they put them forward on a previous occasion, namely, that if there is an unrestricted right of appeal vested in the Supreme Court the case work would be a very huge one. True. I do not wish to suggest, nor have I suggested in my amendment, nor perhaps has anybody else suggested in his amendment, that there should be an unrestricted right of appeal to the Supreme Court. All that we want is that it should be confined to a few specific cases the number of which would not be very large-perhaps the number would not go beyond sixty or seventy or at the outside hundred in the year in the whole country. Let the right of appeal be confined firstly to those cases in which the sentence of death has been passed by the High Court for the first time by its final order which only means this and nothing more that if a person has been condemned to death for the first time he should have one little right of appeal. That is what my amendment implies and nothing more. In such cases where the man has either been acquitted by the lower court, or by the first order of the High Court or Sessions Court he has been sentenced not to death but a lower sentence has been inflicted on him, the accused has the advantage of one judgment in his favour either of acquittal or of a sentence lower than death; and that a judgment in his favour has been passed in the first case by the Session Judge who may be duly qualified to be a Judge of the High Court and who, if luck favours him, may on the day following his pronouncing the judgment be promoted to the High Court. In the other case an order of acquittal may have been passed by a Judge of the High Court himself–a Judge very competent, learned, very reliable and trustworthy. The question is when an accused has a first judgment in his favour, should or should he not have even one right of appeal against the sentence of death passed on him for the first time by the High Court? I submit everybody will agree that an accused person must have much a right and the Supreme Court must have the right to hear an appeal from such an order.
