When the ‘weeping CJI’ story appeared last Thursday, quite a few eminently positioned state officials and clearly thinking citizens sent responses rather lavishly. A highly proven and ethically spotless top cop shared some of the facts that would normally startle people.
The Chief Justice of India (CJI) shed tears because of inadequate resources but seemed oblivious of the fact that the culture of unforgivably long holidays -- 42-day vacations, 64 Sundays and second Saturdays, 12 days of casual and 30 days even for junior judges and Magistrates! High Courts all over India can avail unscheduled half-day closures as a mark of respect to judiciary-linked departed souls including retired judges and serving bar members!
But former CJI Justice RM lodha had proposed scrapping of the vacation system to keep courts open round the year. He had recommended that instead of all the judges going on vacation all at one time, individual judges should take their leave at different times through the year so that the courts are constantly open and there are always benches present to hear cases. The Bar Council of India could never arrive at a consensus to support this move. The ‘more-working-days’ proposal was simply discarded by the stakeholders.
The judiciary must know how the (defamed) Indian police force suffers due to a huge number of vacancies at all levels. Against a sanctioned strength of 2,283,646, it has only 1,722,786, a shortfall by 560,860. Hence the growing rate of crime.
A study by the Bureau of Police Research & Development indicates 90 per cent of staff work for more than 8 hours a day, 68 per cent l for 11 hours and 28 per cent are forced to work restlessly for more than 14 hours. 73.6 per cent of staff indicate that they are not able to avail weekly offs even once a month. Even a worse fact is that over 80 per cent are commonly recalled to duty during off time to deal with emergencies of law and order, VIP bandobusts or similar other donkey jobs.
Even the Indian Railways is struggling with nearly 30 per cent vacancies in the cadre of track maintainers. A senior official lamented that the judiciary boss was shedding tears over vacancies. “We are also short of 20 per cent loco drivers over the sanctioned strength,” he explained, “But we manage by boosting efficiency. All trains maintain 90+ per cent of punctuality; we carry all the goods cheaper than any other mode; and our safety is improving every day. We add new trains every year, run specials during festivals and holidays without additional resources. Our online ticketing is rated to be the best in the world. Our stations and trains are cleaner than ever; quality of food is improving and so is the passenger satisfaction. We don’t keep pendency in running of trains. We do not have a hundred or a thousand trains waiting to run tomorrow or next week just because we have vacancies in our ranks.”
The higher judiciary has powers to discipline every organ of the Government but has no intention of disciplining its own errant members. And impeachment is next to impossible. The SC has admitted that the Indian judiciary was ignoring the common man while giving priority to the rich, powerful and influential people in disposing cases. Judges have taken bribery, misappropriated public money or favoured the executive in order to secure high posts in commissions after retirement but have never been hauled up for all this. A 1991 judgement prohibits the police from registering a criminal case against a Supreme Court judge unless the CJI is consulted to give a final opinion.
The power of contempt of court is abused to stifle public criticism and make an honest evaluation of the judiciary. Most High Courts have not even appointed a PIO as required under the RTI Act. Protocol privileges are abused, false ego makes them look down upon others so much so that top bureaucrats and cops are humiliated in the courts after being forced to appear in person.
The three critical pillars of democracy have to be mutually reinforcing and refrain from displaying supremacy. The weapon of contempt of court should not be used to humiliate officers and offices. The Supreme Court itself has stated that “there has been a misnomer imbibed that the judges and judgements are above criticism and they can criticise or humiliate anyone.”
The criminal justice system needs overhauling so that the Constitutional mandate of equality before law and balance of power are made meaningful. Judicial accountability is absolutely inseparable from judicial independence.
After trashing the NJAC formation attempts, the judiciary keeps harping about 30% vacancies which the restored Collegium is of course expected to fill, if need be with a judicial legislation with which it had come into existence.
But the ‘pendency issue’ has worsened due to the NJAC scrapping and no steps taken by the CJI to have vacancies filled up. Twenty-four High Courts now sit on a pile of nearly four and a half million pending cases. Appeals in criminal cases against conviction are waiting to be heard for as long as 30 years, which is much more than the maximum sentence awarded in the cases. The only way to overcome this problem is having the judicial functionaries work harder without vacations and adjourning hearings indefinitely.
The CJI must regain composure and shed a drop of tear or two to blackmail Judges emotionally to punch in their attendance sharp at nine am like top bureaucrats of the Government of India are doing today.
Surely, working longer hours and curtailing holidays can work wonders. Vacancy filling would be a huge burden on the poor people. Even the previous CJI was hateful of declaring medical expenses of judges, which is the right of the citizens as per the RTI act. Justice Thakur should push a few drops of tear to remove opacity of all kinds from the administrative conduct of brother judges to be considered a Messiah of the people.
One of the High Courts has, on October 17 last year, invited bids for supply of iPhone6S for use by the judges. This model of phone was launched just a month ago. No one minds the lordships owning the latest gadget in the world costing Rs 60,000 each. But people want a return on that investment. The CJI must consider all this and the best use of information technology to bring down human power rather than ask for more and yet deliver justice much faster.
Justice Ruma Pal had once boldly showed the mirror to the judiciary by enumerating its seven sins: turning a blind eye to a colleague’s indiscretion; hypocrisy; secrecy in appointment of judges; plagiarism and prolixity; verbose judgements; arrogance (personal & professional); and nepotism.
The CJI should fix a yardstick for judges and courts for performance appraisal; spend quality time in courts hearing arguments and delivering justice and stop playing the adjournment game; pull up the lazy ones and compel them to deliver; force some discipline on lawyers to come in time and prepared right from the first day; learn some English and unlearn all that latin; make it simpler for the common man to understand what you say and intend.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)