New Delhi, Nov 03: Taking serious note of lapses on the part of 13 state governments to set up Fast Track Courts (FTCs), the Supreme Court today set December 31 as the deadline for making them functional and warned that it would consider asking return of the central grant given for the purpose if the directive is not complied with. This order was passed by a bench comprising Chief Justice V N Khare, Justice S B Sinha and Justice A R Lakshmanan while looking into the progress made by states in the establishment of a total of 1734 FTCs across the country for which the central government was providing cent per cent grant. The court commended Rajasthan and Maharashtra for implementing the FTC scheme in an "excellent" manner but expressed concern about Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab and West Bengal. While asking the defaulting state governments to fill the vacancies in the FTCs and notify the required number of such courts positively by December 31, 2003, it warned that failure to do the needful by the deadline fixed would make the court consider the aspect of asking the states to refund the money received from the Centre for the purpose.
The bench, in view of the request of Rajasthan for more funds to run the FTCs, asked Solicitor General Kirit Raval to file the response of the Centre as to whether the money given for establishment of FTCs were a one time grant or it was open to giving continuous grants for their functioning.

Recently, Law Minister Arun Jaitley had said that 1401 FTCs have been established so far in the country. Bureau Report