By Damith Wickramasekara

A bill on disposal of court productions, which will allow the government to auction off thousands of vehicles currently languishing in courts and police stations throughout the island, is to be presented to Cabinet next week.

Under provisions of the new bill, if a judge is unable to give a ruling on any vehicle that is presented as a court production within a span of three months, that vehicle can be auctioned off.

The money from the sale of that vehicle will be deposited in a Fixed Deposit (FD) account opened specifically for that purpose at a bank, Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe told the Sunday Times. Once the court case concludes, and the vehicle owner is cleared, he or she will be able to obtain the funds deposited in the FD account together with the interest that had accumulated. If the vehicle owner is found guilty however, the funds in the FD will be confiscated by the State.

Explaining the reasoning for presenting the new bill, Minister Rajapakshe said that there are thousands of vehicles valued at billions of rupees currently languishing at courts and police stations in many parts of the country. In some instances, the government has been forced to rent large plots of land to serve as car parks to vehicles that are being kept as court productions. The vehicles are parked at these locations, sometimes for years, falling into a state of disrepair due to lack of maintenance.

“This serves no purpose for the vehicle owner. The new legislation would at least help him or her to save the money,” said the minister.

The bill is due to be presented at the next Cabinet meeting and gazetted thereafter.