UTM Fined for Late Submissions
UTM president Dr. Saulos Chilima has been fined K600,000 because his legal team missed the deadline for submissions of their written arguments in the presidential election case.
The Constitutional Court ordered that each of the respondents- MEC and President Peter Mutharika get K300,00.00 apiece from UTM for the inconvenience suffered.
The court has since ordered that lawyers for MEC and Mutharika should still accept service of the UTM documents and directed that “time for service shall, thus, have been extended by the period from the time at which service was previously directed to be effected to the time at which it is actually accepted by operation of the present order”.
One of Dr Chilima’s lawyers Khumbo Soko has told Zodiak the delay in depositing their submissions was among other things necessitated by power outages that the country is suffering as they could not assemble all necessary documents.
Meanwhile, Registrar of the High court and Supreme Court Agnes Patemba says the 45 days in which the court shall be expected to deliver judgment in the case will start on the day all final submissions will have been deposited.
