SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27 — Attorney General John Van de Kamp has asked the state Supreme Court to overturn two lower-court decisions, one involving Charles Manson’s top lieutenant, which would require annual parole hearings for hundreds of convicted murderers, including Manson.

A state appeals court in Ventura ruled last month that a state law allowing the parole board to wait two or three years between parole hearings, instead of holding them annually, could not be applied to prisoners who were sentenced before, the law took effect in 1983.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal said the board had violated the rights of two prisoners to annual parole hearings — Lawrence Jackson, convicted of a 1961 murder, and Charles “Tex” Watson, convicted of seven murders in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings masterminded by Manson.

The Jackson decision, which was given precedent-making effect by the court, would require annual hearings for about 350 prisoners whose subsequent hearings were delayed two or three years by the Board of Prison Terms since 1983, said the board’s executive officer, William Elliott.

In appealing to the Supreme Court, Van de Kamp’s office said annual hearings for prisoners like Jackson and Watson would be an “idle act” because there is virtually no chance they would be found suitable for parole.

The court has until Feb. 21 to decide whether to take the case. Elliott said recently that he doubted the Supreme Court would intervene and was preparing for a new influx of parole hearings.

The board holds hearings for about 1,400 prisoners, nearly all of them convicted murderers, sentenced to “life” terms with the possibility of parole. Elliott said the court ruling affects most of the well-known prisoners, including Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968.

The board has no authority over most of the state’s 43,000 prisoners, who were sentenced for crimes other than murder and who will be released when their fixed terms end.

A 1977 law required the board to hold annual parole hearings for all “life” prisoners, including those already in prison, after they had served enough years to become eligible for parole. Only a small fraction are found suitable each year for a future release date.

A law effective in 1983 allowed the board to delay a prisoner’s next parole hearing for two years if it decided, for specific reasons, that it was not reasonable to expect parole to be granted at a hearing the following year. The law allowed a three-year delay for multiple murderers.