Judiciary Reforms

04-Aug-2022: Judiciary Reforms in India

Recently, the CJI and other Justices have expressed their views about two very pertinent aspects of our Judiciary System:

• That the poor have no reach to the expensive and elusive houses of Law, and they suffer in silence.

• That sizable section of under trials are resigned to their fate, having no physical, legal, social, financial support.

If you closely look deep inside it, you will be surprised these observations are obvious, and one doesn't require the stature of CJI or Justices. Any average person can guess it. In fact, I have mentioned this very facts in one of my articles 15 years ago.

Well, the pertinent question here is what the CJI or the Justices or for that matter the Judiciary have done about it. Perhaps "Nothing". Everybody knows that the SCI is more interested in advising GoI and other State Govt.s rather that doing its own moral duties.

We must remember that there are over 4.5 crore cases pending in various courts in India (about 75,000 in the SC). And the number of judges stand at about 29,000 (about 33 in SC). If a judge clears one case per working day, it will take 6 years to clear the back log only, leave aside the new cases in these 6 years.

We frequently hear the statement: "Bail is the norm and Jail is exception". But for whom? For people with money & influence, not for poor and innocent people.

Here and now, I suggest some very simple steps to go about or just to initiate Judiciary Reforms. Why simple? It is said that the best solutions are always simple. 

• All the vacancies in all the courts should be filled up on an urgent basis.

• All the courts must work for 8 hours a day and 6 days in a week.

• There shouldn't be any "Summer  / Winter Vacation" for the Judges (That was a Btitish Legacy). We must have 300 working days at the least.

• All the under trials who have already put up time more than if they would be convicted, must be released with immediate effect.

• Then there are some weird cases like one case is still lingering for the accounting mismatch of Rs, 28 only. Such cases must be wound up at once.

• There are still cases where things were delayed deliberately, hearing adjourned on flimsy ground, because the Lawyers get to benefit out of these. Such cases should be stopped out rightly.

• There are several instances of poor bailees who are not released from Jail because of some red-tapism or procedural issues. 

• Unnecessary / uncalled for review petitions must be prevented.

• Special treatment to the influential section must be stopped- like opening the court at the middle of the night, going straight to SC, etc.

• In courts, where there are heavy back-log of cases, extra courts and judges may be created, like Fast Track Courts, Lok Adalats, and Gram Nyayalayas, Family Courts, etc.

• Legal assistance to be accorded to the weaker sections of society.

• In PIL cases, the petitioner has to get at least 1000 signatures of public, prove his integrity & back ground free of any criminal case, and also has to prove his stake / involvement.

• The courts should do away with archaic and British related laws which have lost their relevance today.

• Still there are cases where the Judge is taken to task because of speedy judgement. These things should be encouraged, of course with correct procedure, not taken to task.

These suggestions look simplistic and don't require any special ability to spell out, but difficult to implement in our own scheme of things. But there must be a start sometime- the sooner the better. Now the question is who will initiate it? It's the CJI of the SC of course.

Think it over!

The Supreme Court of India-2

Points to Ponder for 14-Jan-2018: 

In the last Post I wrote about the Supreme Court. Within just a couple of days, an unprecedented event took place. Four Senior-Most Judges expressed concern that there have been instances where cases having far reaching consequences for the Nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of the Court selectively to the benches “of their preference” without any rationale basis for such assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs.

Now, let me try to analyse this impartially without prejudice to anybody, point by point:

They say that the cases are assigned to selective Judges or Benches for what reasons – must be for a verdict favourable to the CJI. It means that: 

(1) this verdict would be unfavourable to the majority of the remaining Judges, and 

(2) if the assignment of cases were done on the “Rational” basis, the verdicts may be different.

Now this is the catch. Today, in the age of high technology, it’s very difficult to accept different verdicts from different benches given the same set of facts.

Well, it happens all the while, all types of courts have different opinions and verdicts. But in the Supreme Court itself, if judgments differ, then we have to seriously think it over.

And, most importantly, the four Judges inadvertently admit that Judges can have different opinions and there is a chance of getting influenced by the external or internal factors.