Stop Using 'Court Below' In Official Records, Shift To 'Trial Court': Allahabad HC Directs Registry

The Allahabad High Court recently directed the HC Registry to avoid using terms such as "court below" and "lower court" in official records/procedure.

Noting that these phrases do not represent the correct legal terminology, the Court has ordered that the official records must use the term "trial court" or refer directly to the concerned designated court.

A bench of Justice Abdul Shahid passed this order while taking exception to the use of the term "court below" for referring to the Special Court or the Exclusive Special Court constituted under Section 14 of the SC-ST Act, 1989.

IN this regard, the bench referred to the Supreme Court's 2024 order in Sakhawat and another vs State of Uttar Pradesh 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 626, wherein it was stressed that describing any Court as a “Lower Court” was against the ethos of the Constitution.

"A copy of this order, for this purpose only, may be placed before the learned Registrar General for perusal and may be considered for implementation of these directions of the Supreme Court after due procedure on the administrative side," the Court observed in itse.

The High Court was essentially dealing with a plea challenging a summoning order as well as the entire criminal proceedings in a case registered under the SC-ST Act.

In this case, an FIR was lodged by the complainant [Jai Prakash Anuragi, the Chairman of the Zila Panchayat, Mahoba], alleging that on June 28, 2025, during a tender process, the accused-applicant (Mahesh Tiwari) pushed a government employee.

He further alleged that another accused (Ankit Shukla) caught hold of him from behind, hurled abuses and used caste-based remarks.

However, during the investigation, the statements were changed and the High Court noted that the complainant, who initially named and assigned specific roles to the accused, changed his entire narrative after watching the office's CCTV footage.

The Court found glaring inconsistencies in the complainant's narrative as it noted that his eyewitness accounts and his statements based on the CCTV footage completely contradicted each other

The bench also discarded the argument that the CCTV footage should prevail over the ocular evidence

"The statement of the complainant suffers from inherent inconsistencies. No person is permitted to invoke the process of law according to his own wishes, surmises, and conjectures. Such inconsistencies go to the very root of the matter. The entire incident, as narrated and recorded by the complainant in his complaint, is contradicted by his subsequent deviations from his own statements and averments based on alleged ocular evidence", the bench concluded.

In view of this, the bench allowed the criminal appeal and quashed the summoning order of the Special Judge (SC/ST) Act/Additional District & Sessions Judge, Mahoba, and also quashed the entire proceedings against the appellant.

Case title - Mahesh Tiwari vs State of U.P. and Another 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 251

Case citation: 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 251

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