THE NATIONAL
LAWYERS’ CAMPAIGN FOR
|
||||
|
Mathews J. Nedumpara
President
|
Mrs. Rohini M. Amin
Vice President
Mumbai
|
Bijoy Krishna Adhikari,
Vice President
Kolkata
|
Navaneetha Krishnan
General Secretary
|
Parbinder Singh Sethi,
Treasurer
|
AN APPEAL TO THE Hon'ble Chief
Justice OF India
11th January,
2016
Hon'ble Shri T.S. Thakur,
Chief Justice of India,
Supreme
Court of India,
Tilak
Marg,
New
Delhi 110 001.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR Lordship,
We,
the humble campaigners for greater transparency and reforms in the judiciary,
consider Your Lordship’s elevation as the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to be a
turning point in so far as the aspirations of the common man for a just and
fair justice delivery system. It is no
flattery, and means no insinuation of Your Lordship’s predecessor CJIs, that
nearly a month of Your Lordship occupying the august office of the CJI has made
enormous difference in so far as the faith of the ordinary men and ordinary
lawyers in the CJI as the pater familias of the Indian judiciary.
2. Without meaning any innuendo or
criticism of Your Lordship’s predecessors, Your Lordship, we are afraid to say,
has inherited a legacy where the common man believe that while the Supreme
Court insisted the highest degree of transparency in all walks of life, when it
came to its own affairs it chose to adopt a different standard, nay, a double
standard. The judgment of the Five-Judge
Constitution Bench in the NJAC case, declaring the Constitution
(Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014 and the National Judicial Appointment
Commission Act, 2014 (the Acts, for short) as unconstitutional, and aborting
the NJAC which the said Acts conceived without allowing those who supported the
Acts and present in the Court for 31 days of its hearing to raise the plea that
the said Acts, which are in the realm of executive and legislative policies
involving no violation of anyone’s fundamental rights – for which alone the
jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution could be invoked – are not
justiciable and, therefore, the challenge of the said Acts is wholly
misconceived, has meant a deadly blow in so far as the concern for greater
transparency in the appointment of Judges to the higher judiciary is concerned.
3. The contempt of Court jurisprudence,
unknown to civil law and which has become obsolete in common law countries, is
so much abused in India that anyone who dares to raise his voice against the
judiciary is hauled up for contempt of Court, rendering the very concept of
freedom of speech in jeopardy. The
collegium system of appointment of Judges meant the august office of the Judges
of the Supreme Court and High Courts being monopolized
by the kith and kin,
juniors and friends of sitting and former Judges of the Supreme Court and High
Courts, celebrated lawyers, Chief Ministers, Governors et al and a few first
generation lawyers who are all politically connected or are close to big
industrial houses, who in turn appoint their kith and kin and friends as Senior
Advocates. The ordinary lawyers, who
constitute 95% of the legal fraternity, are completely marginalized. The 5% of the upper class and elite lawyers
monopolize 95% of the revenue of the legal profession which they have reduced
to an industry. Sons and daughters of
the common men, taxi drivers, teachers, farmers etc., who have no Godfathers,
are wholly neglected. While the powerful
and the very rich people like Salman Khan, who is able to, even when he is on
bail, secure his appeal of 2015 to be taken up for hearing and allowed by the
High Court of Bombay in the year 2015 itself, appeals of life convicts, who
remain in jail since the dates of their arrest in 1998, remain pending for
hearing. Senior lawyers like Ram
Jetmalani, Harish Salve et al, who represent the cause of the rich, are allowed
to argue for days and days, the ordinary lawyers, who represent the cause of
the common men, are refused a fair hearing and are even shooed away. In some High Courts the things have reached
such a pass that the undersigned are scared to appear when the Court Room is
thinly crowded because in a crowded Court they may not face the risk of being
hauled up for contempt for the fearless submission they make, compared to a
less crowded Court Room where we are often ill-treated.
4. We
address Your Lordship with a heavy heart.
We are sad that we have to say what we have said above, the truth but and
nothing but the truth. We have resolved
to be reticent and have taken every care to put across what we feel so
intensely in the most respectful, dignified and decorous language as possible.
5. We believe that the institution of
judiciary is not for lawyers and Judges; the real stakeholders are “we, the
people”. The Contempt of Courts Act,
1971, which has been grossly abused, undoubtedly has literally meant a gag on
the media and has, to a large extent, secured the people from being not aware
of the true state of Indian judiciary.
To keep the public at large in darkness is no solution. The institution of judiciary should allow
itself to be criticized like the other wings of the State; allow the public to
know its deficiencies, for, ultimately the institution of judiciary is built on
the confidence of the people. It cannot
be gainsaid that the cancer of corruption has spread its tentacles to the
corpus of our nation and no branch of it, nay, even the judiciary, is exempt
from that. The most effective
disinfectant is sunlight, so has held the Hon'ble Judges. The Supreme Court has been the champion of the
cause of transparency when it came to disclosure of assets, liabilities and
criminal records of the political case.
The Supreme Court has been the real moving spirit behind the Right to
Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act); yet, when it came to its own affairs, we are
afraid to say, the judiciary adopted a different standard. Wherever and whenever a citizen has asked for
information relating to selection and appointment of Judges of the Supreme
Court and High Courts by invoking the RTI Act, not only such information was
denied, but the Public Information Officers have even taken the stand that
furnishing of the information would amount to contempt of Court.
6.
In the Supreme Courts of 50
countries, including United Kingdom, the Court proceedings are video-recorded
and are even telecast live. The American
Supreme Court is the only exception where its proceedings are audio-recorded
since 1955. However, in so far as our
Supreme Court is concerned, the plea to audio-record its proceedings has found
no acceptance from the Hon'ble Judges.
It is said that “no army can stop
an idea whose time has come” (Victor Hugo).
The advancement of information and technology has meant greater appetite
of the common man to know the affairs of Courts. There can be no logical or rational
foundation for resisting the common man’s demand for video-recording of Court
proceedings, at least for introducing it on a pilot/experimental
basis. For us, the ordinary lawyers who
constitute the vast majority of the campaign, quashing of the aforesaid Acts is
not a matter of mere theoretical issue.
So far as the ordinary lawyer is concerned, a transparent, just and fair
system of selection of appointment of Judges of the higher judiciary and
abolition of the classification of lawyers into two classes, Senior Advocates
and ordinary Advocates, is a question of his very existence. Casteism and apartheid in legal profession
has to be brought to an end. That lawyers
who are not designated as Senior Advocates are very often unfairly treated in
Courts is a fact which cannot be denied.
Advertisement of vacancies of Judges of the higher judiciary, invitation
of applications from all eligible stakeholders, open and transparent selection
and appointment of Judges, non-discriminatory treatment to lawyers who are not
designated as Senior Advocates, video-recording of Court proceedings, which
could be secured without any difficulty and at very little cost, would mean a
revolution in the realm of transparency in so far as the justice delivery
system is concerned. We are confident
that Your Lordship will give more focus on these issues.
7. We consider that the country is
fortunate to have your gracious and noble self as the CJI, though Your Lordship’s
tenure is short. The task before Your
Lordship is daunting with more than 40% of the posts of Judges remaining
vacant. The issue which Your Lordship is
confronted with is not merely a theoretical or legal issue, but a practical one
which requires enormous practical wisdom, sense of fairness and statesmanship. It is only the grace of the providence that
we have presently a CJI who is bestowed with all the aforesaid qualities in
abundance.
With respectful regards,
Yours
sincerely,
(Mathews
J. Nedumpara)
President
No comments:
Post a Comment