Chanakya

CITIZENS' APPEAL: ENSURING

EXPEDITIOUS AND TIMELY JUSTICE TO ALL

Team:

Aviral Umrao

Aman Sachan

Abhishek Yadav

Mohd. Hashim

Parijat Gupta

PROBLEM STATEMENT

• The judicial system is the corner stone of India's democratic polity. India being the largest democracy in the world with lengthiest written constitution with a soul spirit,

characterized in its preamble, advocating various goals. Justice is one of goal.

• The delay in the disposal of cases, which leads to accumulation of more and more case and this results in further delay.

CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM

• Over 3 million cases are pending in India's 21 high court and 67,964 in hon’ble Supreme court.

• India in 2004, we had 11 judges per million population.

• The supreme court of India itself has 189 holidays in 2009 with just 176 working days with only 24 judges sitting at present.

• Every high court hears cases approx. for five hours and 15 minutes a day, and is open for 213 working days a year.

• Judiciary is no longer attracting the best legal talent because of disparity in the income of bright young lawyers and the emoluments of judicial officers.

• Radical change in the pattern of litigation.

• Delays in filling up vacancies in high courts.

• Lack of priority for disposal of old cases.

• Granting of unnecessary adjournments.

REASONS FOR SELECTING A SPECIFIC CAUSE(S)

• The vast number of cases pending in the supreme court as well as the other lower courts has defeated the very purpose of the judicial system.

• Law ceases to have a deterrent effect, as the like minded people continue to indulge in the criminal activities.

• People do not have faith and criminals do not have fear of judiciary due to delay in justice system.

Consequently:

• Murder in india occurs every 13 minutes – 106 murders in every 24 hrs - if all accused are arrested, 100 out of 106 will be acquitted

• Crime becomes a high profit, low risk business,

• 37 rapes in 24 hrs – if all rapists are arrested, 35 out of 37 will be acquitted

• Corruption gallops and enters all fields:

• Food adulteration—vegetables, pulses, milk—crossed danger level

• Pharmaceutical adulteration

• Piracy in films, music, automobiles parts and branded goods jumps to 9,000 crores Counterfeiting

• Recruitment scandals galore

• Education, health, judiciary, police, reek of corruption, etc.

PROPOSED SOLUTION & IMPLEMENTATIONS

• Amendment of section 80 and Order V of CPC and also the concerned Court’s Rules, In order to shorten delay.

• If the government officer finds that the suit proposed to be filed is just a claim he needs to take immediate action thereby avoiding unnecessary litigation by settling the claim.

Amendments in procedural laws

• Lok Adalats should be organized frequently to solve matters which can be solved by merely giving compensation.

• Alternative dispute resolution methods should be adopted.

• The Fast Track Courts shall grant priority to the clearance of oldest sessions cases and the cases involving under trials in dungeons

• Evening courts for dealing minor offences e.g. summary trail cases, case u/s 125.

More Lok Adalats, ADR, Fast Track Courts, Evening

courts

• In Sessions cases, if there are inordinate delays attributable to the parties, and the ADJs trying the case feel helpless, the concerned Judge, firstly inform the DSP/SSP, then shall send up the report to the High Court for necessary action.

• A Special Cell in the High Court exclusively for old pending Sessions cases.

• On the report received from the District Judge, quarterly should take necessary measures on the administrative side to remove the bottlenecks in

Changes in Subordinate judiciary

• In India, not many students aspire to take legal field as their profession and reason being the traditional notion of parents regarding law as dull and uncertain. So, there is need of sensitization in legal education and for subordinate judiciary so that more and more person would join.

• Measures like making judicial services more lucrative by high salaries, perks to be given to subordinate judicial posts.

• By improving the standard of law universities, faculties thereof so that more competent student should pass out. By this there would not be any dearth for filling up competent persons to the judicial services.

Sensitization of legal education

& profession

• The management of the Courts should be modernized.

• In order to attract persons of the right caliber to the judicial cadre, we must improve their service conditions, particularly of the trial court judges.

Modernized courts,

• Dedicated bail court

• Dedicated summons Court

• Centralized registry

• Only ripe cases listed before sessions court - not more than five in a day – 2 for charge and 2 for evidence – time for spill over

• Once session trial begins it must be heard day to day till concluded

• Non-availability of witnesses or counsel – no ground for adjournment

Dedicated courts

PROPOSED SOLUTION & IMPLEMENTATIONS CONT.

• Increase in the number of Judicial Officers will have to be accompanied by proportionate increase in the number of court rooms.

• The existing court buildings, amenities are grossly inadequate to meet even the existing requirements and their condition particularly in small towns is pathetic.

• In order to ensure that the new buildings meet all the requirements of the courts and their officers, it is desirable to prepare standard building plans and construct buildings accordingly.

• In order to provide information to the litigants it is necessary to have facilitation center's in each court complex which should be manned by competent court officers and should be linked to the computer network.

Augmenting infrastructure

• There should be, wherever possible, conversion of case related documents into online files so that judges can have easy and fast access to them when required, and also provide access code to the parties.

• Use of computer technology should be increase by leap and bound to expedite the disposal of cases without compromising with the authenticity of documents.

Justice and technology

• Gram Nyayalayas Act, 2008 is an Act of Parliament of India enacted for establishment of Gram Nyayalayas or village courts for speedy and easy access to justice system in the rural areas of India.

• Due to the sluggish work of government till now only 151 functional Gram Nyayalayas in the country are working against target of 5000. (as of 20012 May)

Gram Nyayalayas

Jurisdiction of supreme court should be divided in two.

1.Court of Appeal for matters which involve substantial question of law.

2. Constitutional court should take matters of constitutional importance and interpretation of constitution.

IMPACT OF THE SOLUTION

• Firstly, with the implementation of proposed solution intended, impact would be in reduction of pending cases in courts of law and thereby firming the believe of general public in

court.

• After 67 years of independence, people still awaiting speedy and expeditious justice as enunciated in the preamble.

• Fast disposal of cases will itself generate deterrent effect of various laws in the mind of potential offenders.

• Most significant impact of proposed solution would be balanced administration of justice irrespective of class, rank, financial status of parties by prolonged court proceedings.

• In any civilized country judiciary is just like a balancing arm balancing interests of parties involved, our proposal would be successful if any how cases start disposing within

reasonable time.

• The most essential feature of any government system is transparency; therefore there is a need of transparency in the subordinate judiciary to reduce judge-clerk-lawyer

arrangement, as monitoring mechanism.

• Bar council of India should cautiously grant affiliation to new law colleges so as to mitigate the risk of fake and incompetent colleges

CURRENT NUMBER OF JUDGES IN INDIA ARE 15.4 PER MILLION WHICH SHOULD BE 50 PER MILLION IN ORDER TO

AVOID DELAY IN JUSTICE AND BACKLOG OF CASES.

CHALLENGES RISK

AND MITIGATING FACTORS TO THE PROPOSED SOLUTION

• Infrastructure.

• Effective human resource.

• Co-ordination between Legislative/Executive/Judiciary.

• Legal education and law collages.

Challenges

• Government cannot foresee the viability of funding this model.

• Young law graduates are not interested in serving the bar and bench.

• Standard of legal education does not qualify the requisites of this model.

Risk

Mitigating Factors

• Adjournment Policy.

• Punctuality of the lawyers, magistrates and judges.

• Inadequate Standard of subordinate judiciary.

• Judicial accountability.

• Lack of funds.

• Frequent changes in procedural and substantive laws.

• Frequent changes in benches.

• No fixed subject matter of judges.

REFERENCES

http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/reports/report221.pdf http://www.judicialreform.in/forums/ 221 report law commission of india http://ncrb.gov.in/ http://ncrb.gov.in/CD-CII2012/cii-2012/figure%20at%20a%20glance.pdf Constitution of india Civil procedure code 1908 Gram nayalya act 2008 www.manupatra.com www.jstor.com http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/pendingstat.htm http://indiandemocracy08.berkeley.edu/docs/Menon-LawANDJustice-ALook%20.pdf http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-17/india/36393546_1_crore-cases-judges-per-million-population-civil-case