Common Man still retains faith in Judiciary, says PM
Common Man still retains faith in Judiciary, says PM
Sanjay Chaturvedi
While addressing the Joint Conference of Chief Justices of States and High Court in Vigyan Bhawan Delhi Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched many points that not only the law makers but the common man also understands. Of these points the foremost was his concern about the pending cases in courts at all levels starting from the district courts to the level of Supreme Court. He shared the concern with the Chief Justice that he expressed in his speech a day before. In order to resolve the issue he said that solution could be worked out only when the judiciary and the government sit together and discuss the steps to be taken. As talked about repeatedly on earlier occasion after the BJP coming to power the Prime Minister, once again, stressed on the efforts being made by the Government to remove archaic laws from the statute books. It is to be noted here that the government has already started this process by overhauling the labour acts and factory acts. Many changes in these acts have already been done with the inputs from industry and various government departments.
Talking about the respect the judiciary has gained in the country, the Prime Minister said that the Judiciary has built up an enormous faith and reputation among the people of India, and should evolve its own in-built systems for self-assessment, so that it can live up to the high expectations placed on it by the people.
In his presidential address Justice, T.S.Thakur, Chief Justice of India expressed his deep concern on the rising vacancies of Judges in High Courts as well as subordinate courts. He referred to the enormous work load on the judiciary due to this reason. He was of the opinion that the piling of cases at various levels in courts which are at present around three crores can be effectively reduced if all the vacancies in several High Courts and district as well as lower courts are filled up. He underlined the steep shortage of judges being the reason behind the piling cases.
Shri Thakur also suggested that services of retired Judges who are willing to work can be utilized as per the provisions of Constitution. He said the National Court management committee has also suggested working in a mission mode for the disposal of pending cases in such a way that no case remains pending for more than five years. On the issue of Commercial courts, the Chief Justice said you need to work in a totally different environment. He said it should be where the corporate clientele should feel comfortable.
Shri D.V.Sadananda Gowda said that as per information available, the Central Government and the State Governments have together spent on an average a sum of about Rs. 2,000 crores per annum during the last three years on development of judicial infrastructure. Accordingly, the overall availability of the court halls now matches the working strength of around 16000 judges / judicial officers in the subordinate judiciary. With a number of projects in hand, we are aiming at 20,000 court halls in the near future to match the availability with sanctioned strength in every state, he noted.
Referring to the data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) at the end of 2014 the minister said there were about 2.82 lakh under-trial prisoners in the jails, which constituted two-third of the total inmates. During the early years after our independence the under-trial prisoners constituted only one third of the total prisoners in jails. However, this situation prevails despite amendments in Criminal Procedure Code prescribing for release of under-trial prisoners on personal bond who have spent half of their maximum sentence. He urged the State Governments and Chief Justices of the High Courts to take appropriate steps to ensure that this provision is implemented expeditiously. He also spoke extensively on the e-court Integrated Mission Mode Project. According to Gowda, the Phase-I of the mission proved successful while the second phase is under progress that concentrates on setting up of centralized filing centers, digitization of documents, adoption of document management systems, creation of e-filing and e-payment gateways. However, there is lack of awareness about the potential of e-Court Project among the judges as well as public at large. In this connection he again urged upon Chief Justices of the High Courts to not only sensitize the members of the judiciary to utilize full potential of technological advancements being made but at the same time disseminate necessary information about litigant friendly services being provided under the project to public at large.
