President Pranab Mukherjee has advised the judiciary to red flag populist decisions of the Governments. “There can be occasions of strains and divergence of views. Elected representatives, who have to fulfil people’s expectations, judiciary must red-flag any populist decision that can infringe upon one’s democratic rights,” said Mukherjee while inaugurating the centenary celebrations of the Patna High Court here on Saturday.
The President also cautioned the judiciary on compromising on the appointment of judges. He said even though there had been pressure to fill the vacancies of judges across the country there must not be any compromise on their appointment. To this Chief justice of India Hl Dattu assured him that the judiciary would continue to remain independent.
Mukherjee expressed concern over the spiraling number of cases pending in the courts. He said the Patna High court has 33,297 pending cases while subordinate courts have over two million pending cases. He noted that the Patna High court is short of 12 judges..
He said, “Efforts have been made to expeditiously fill the vacancies but in that process surely there cannot be a compromise on the quality of the appointment because only the man who preside over the court, the quality of judges have been the quality of judgment. On the other hand, it is equally true that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. But under no circumstances quality could be compromised. Therefore the new technological methods, new technological solutions, massive computerisation, emailing etc and all these tools available should be provided to judiciary at all levels.”
The President further said that more resources should be provided for the enhancement of the capacities, quality and availability of infrastructural facilities for all courts starting from the Supreme Court to subordinate courts. He emphasised to reach the objective of not only accessible but affordable justice to all.
Mukherjee termed the independence of judiciary as the cornerstone of the democracy and ended his address with an appeal to members of bars, benches and all stakeholders to make successful our democratic functioning and constitutional guarantee provided by our forefathers. Earlier, the President released the commemorative postal stamp on Patna High Court centenary celebration.
He also unveiled a lithograph. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of communication & IT; D.V. Sadanand Gowda, Union Minister of law & Justice, Nitish Kumar, Chief minister of Bihar; H.l. Dattu, Chief Justice of India ; Kesari Nath Tripathy, Governor of Bihar; Narsimha Reddy, chief justice of Patna high court also addressed the occasion.