President: time for crusade against scourge of court arrears
New Delhi: Voicing concern over delay in dispensing justice, President Pratibha Patil on Saturday said, “We cannot allow a situation where the common man is tempted to take the law into his own hands and subscribe to the deviant culture of the lynch mob.”
“The foremost problem to be tackled is the huge swell in the volume of litigation. Congestion in courts has become a daunting challenge. Case disposals are excruciatingly time consuming. This agonising delay has rendered the common man’s knock on the doors of justice a frustrating experience,” she said inaugurating a national seminar on judicial reforms organised by the Confederation of Indian Bar at the Vigyan Bhawan here.
Expressing her anguish, Ms. Patil said: “After more than six decades since our independence, time has come when we need to seriously introspect whether our judicial machinery has lived up to its expectations of walking the enlightened way by securing complete justice to all and standing out as the beacon of truth, faith and hope.”
Ms. Patil said: “The time has come when we as stakeholders, without being unduly touchy and sensitive to criticism, have to collectively introspect the causes of the ills of judicial administration and find solutions squarely.”
She attributed the delay in dispensing justice to the intricacies of procedures, prolonging cases and unending process of appeals. The ratio of judges to population was yet another reason. “We have only 10.5 judges per million population.”
Simplify procedure
The President said, “We need to have in place a judicial machinery which is easily accessible and [which] dispenses affordable and incorruptible justice to the people.
Towards this endeavour, there is a strong case for making some of our legal procedures simple, streamlined, rational, easily understandable and commonsensical.” However, amendments of procedures had to be made carefully to ensure quick justice while at the same time safeguarding fair play, equity and good conscience. “Speedy but faulty justice is no justice at all.”
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