Open Forum
New Delhi, 2 December 2020
Judicial System
OVERHAUL CREDIBILITY, STRENGTH
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
A surge in population
over the years is impacting a healthy and equitable structure for all citizens.
While healthcare has been an area of grave concern as its reach hasn’t kept
pace with demand, another sector is the judiciary, where inadequate
infrastructure has led to litigations remaining pending for years together.
Moreover, it is compounded by the fact that with inter-personal and
inter-societal relations getting complicated the individual has lost his
cooperative spirit to live in peace and harmony, leading to a spurt in legal
cases.
It is often said, and
perhaps rightly so, that the rich and the powerful have, over the decades, been
getting the benefits of the judicial system. Obviously, they have the
wherewithal to engage lawyers and run the case for years together. People from
low income groups, including EWS, neither have the financial strength nor the
time to fight a case even when injustice is being done against him and his
family.
Additionally, the top
judiciary lately has been seen to be courting controversy. Recall the Supreme
Court issuing a contempt notice against activist and lawyer Prashant Bhushan
over a tweet about the Chief Justice of India. It said: “We are, prima facie,
of the view that the aforesaid statements on Twitter have brought the
administration of justice in disrepute and are capable of undermining the
dignity and authority of the Institution of the Supreme Court in general and
the office of the CJI in particular in the eyes of the public at large.” With
Bhushan refusing to apologise, the court imposed a token fine of Rs 1 and said
if he failed to do so, he would have to undergo three months’ prison sentence
and would be debarred from legal practice for three years.
Importantly, the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an international NGO that defends
human rights and rule of law worldwide, considered Bhushan’ conviction for
contempt to be inconsistent with international standards on freedom of
expression and role of lawyers. It had stated that the conviction has a
chilling effect on the exercise of protected freedom of expression in India and
thus, urged a review of the laws and standards on criminal contempt as applied
by Indian courts.
Also recently, social
media went viral and raised questions on Supreme Court’s urgent hearing of Arnab
Goswami, Editor-in-Chief, Republic TV’s petition.
As is well known, the TV channel has been blatantly supporting Government
policies and programmes and has recently trained his guns against the
Maharashtra government under Uddhav Thackeray, whose police had arrested him in
an old suicide case.
It promoted President,
Supreme Court Bar Association Dushyant Dave to write a letter to the court’s Secretary-General
protesting against this urgent hearing. He wrote against “selective listing” of
matters by the Registry and even called it a ‘gross abuse of administrative
power’: “The serious issue here is selective listing of matters that the
registry under your leadership is indulging in for last eight months during
COVID pandemic. While thousands of citizens remain in jails, languishing for
long periods while their matters filed before the Supreme Court are not getting
listed for weeks and months, it is, to say the least, deeply disturbing as to
how and why every time Goswami approaches the Supreme Court, his matter gets
listed instantly.”
Indeed, it is an
unfortunate reality that there are thousands of poor and destitute undertrials,
without heavyweight lawyers or influential supporters, who continue to languish
in prison for years, without getting heard. As per available data, there are more
examples of such cases listed urgently in the apex court during the lockdown.
Moreover, there are 4098 bail applications pending in the Bombay high court and
37,245 such applications in eight major High Courts combined (as on June end,
2019). The institutional problem remains unaddressed but delays in the case of
political prisoners are only its most visible symptoms.
The question that
arises is obviously the need to provide equal justice to all quickly and
fairly. This is the basic reform needed for the judiciary and therefore it’s urgent
for more judges to be appointed, at least in the High Courts and the Supreme
Court. It goes without saying that keeping the country’s judicial heritage in
mind, the personal liberty of the wrongly incarcerated needs to be given
uppermost importance. How can we accept the fact that we have a system that
makes it acceptable for those who hold views unpalatable to the government to
be arrested without reason and evidence?
Over the years, it is
an accepted fact that not just the poor but even the middle class may not be
able to find justice from the judiciary. The expansion of the judiciary has not
taken place to the extent necessary and obviously that has resulted in piling
up cases in high courts, district courts, sessions courts, etc.
Another important
aspect which has been a cause of serious concern is the alleged dwindling lack
of independence of the judiciary over the years. There is a growing worry that right
from the grass-root level, the will to improve the system is lacking thus
impacting, what activists would term neutral and judicious verdicts. However,
this is not to undermine some very valuable verdicts of the Supreme Court as
also some High Courts specially relating to social, environmental and other
related issues.
The coveted place
where the judicial system used to stand has changed mainly due to lack of
promptness in disposal of cases. Obviously the situation would not have been so
if there had been adequate judicial officers and sub-divisional magistrates at
the lower level and the poorer sections got prompt justice, say at least within
a year or so. Apart from the Centre, which unfortunately has not made this top
priority, the States are equally responsible in ignoring the judiciary.
In such a situation,
there is need for action and just highlighting the pendency of cases will not
solve the matter. All States should be asked to expand the judicial system by
at least 10 per cent within a year. To start with, all vacancies need to be
filled on a war footing within a time frame of six months. There has also been
a good proposal through a PIL recently in the apex court, seeking re-employment
of retired judges in SC and High Courts to fill the large number of vacancies
and speed up justice delivery on basis of Articles 128 and 224A of the
Constitution.
Even the Attorney General
of India, has stated that the Courts of Appeal (CoA) must be set up in four
regions of the country to adjudicate appeals against High Court verdicts to
provide citizens better access to justice and ease the enormous case burden on
the Supreme Court to make it the truly constitutional court, as envisaged by the
Constitution framers. He even proposed that each CoA should have around 15
judges who should fulfil the same legibility criteria of SC judges.
Whether the Centre
does it or not, the demand for setting up an independent commission not by the
government but by the Chief Justice of India regarding the pendency of cases as
also how the poor can approach and get justice within a specific time frame must
grow louder. It’s time for people and
the civil society to stand up for their rights to be protected by this branch
of the system. ----INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
|