A high level national discussion on ‘Judicial Reforms – Need for Procedural Modifications’ was organised by Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), a human rights organisation, at Hamdard University in the capital on June 1.
APCR president Advocate Yusuf Muchala delivered the welcome-note and briefed the participants on Judicial reforms – need for procedural modifications and raised the question: what amendments and actions should be taken for making judiciary more efficient and effective.
Briefing the performances of APCR during the last two years, he expressed, “We shaped and developed infrastructure of the organisation in the first year and arranged workshops and training programmes for preparing and streamlining legal workers across the country in the second year. At this juncture we cannot say we have achieved great success in the mission but we are progressing in the right way and right direction. Moreover the situation of judicial system is before us so we hope from our legal luminaries to guide APCR’s workers in protecting the civil rights of poor and downtrodden people.”?
Advocate Ms Nandita Haksarsaid, “It (APCR) has to think in an innovative passion and look at the legal issues from a political, economical and social point of views. I think no body here would be in the illusion that certain reforms suddenly would rescue the demeaning democratic institutions. If we would like to reform the system then we lawyers and dignitary people have the challenge to expose the system in a systematic and committed way and also expose its irregularities through discussions and writing.” She cited the two cases, first about UP bar council’s recently passed resolution in which it refused to take any case of terror accused which is against the basic essence of justice. And another case of a social activist, Dr Binayak Sen, 59 years old, Vice President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), who has been in the jail for one year for allegedly helping Naxalites. She said, “In the light of these cases the legal education, judiciary, bar and other such institutions have failed to uphold the legal ethics and legal values which should be restored.” ??
Prof. Afzal Wani urged the workers of APCR to develop such trends and fashion among the law students and people as can produce good lawyers and judges for courts. He expressed concerns over the new generation of lawyers who are coming from national law schools. Most of them have no trend to be research lawyers since American technologies are enticing them and they too feel more comfortable to go in for the corporate world rather than the law courts. “No doubt our judicial system too has been affected by the menace of corruption and it is not only material corruption but ideological corruption and the corruption of mind. We should take some corrective measures to rescue the judiciary from this menace,” he added.
Referring to Muslims’ traditional system of dispute resolution within the community through Mufti and others, he suggested ?that local community dispute consultant body like Panchayat can be reintroduced and developed as an alternative system for resolving the disputes which would definitely reduce the burden of courts to some extent.?
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, expressing on the inefficacy of judiciary, mentioned the fact that only 1% of people get justice and merely 20% of Indians can afford to go to the court of law for justice whereas only 5% of them get justice in reasonable time. “It is meaningless for a person if he or she gets justice in five to 20 years so some changes should be made in this regard so that justice can be delivered rapidly,” he added.??
Justice A. M. Ahmadi,former Chief Justice of India, presided over the discussion. He made certain points about the Indian judicial system, “India is a petition friendly country and if we compare Indian judicial system with that in USA, we find in India there are 12.5 judges on per million populations and out of 100 cases that are brought in the court, more than 75% go for trial and about 2.5 crores of cases are pending. While in USA 110 judges are on per million populations and merely 5 to 7% of cases go for trail while poor Americans cannot afford to fight the case without the legal aids.”
He pointed out that Indian judiciary alone is not responsible for all existing evils in the system since it is part of the whole democratic system. But there are reasons which affect over all judicial system like inadequate salaries of judges, massive burden of cases on the shoulders of meagre judges and short of monetary allocation as well as massive amount of trials that are registered. ?
Speaking as Chief Guest, Justice Rajinder Sacharsuggested seeing both good and bad sides of judiciary and fighting against the evils. “Some of the judges may take bribe but I always say judges are good and bad too while some understand Human Rights and some do not, when a judge delivers good verdict it is admirable. If he delivers wrong, it would be a judgment; so we have to respect in both cases and believe in democracy. Of course Indian courts have generally given fine verdicts,” he said. ?“Those who are not suffering have to fight when injustice is being done with others so that injustice will end because injustice with a person is equivalent to injustice with all,” he asserted.
Vote of thanks was proposed by Dr. Shakil Ahmed, Secretary of APCR.