Faith Of Common Man In Judiciary Has Eroded Considerably; Should Find Out Where We've Gone Wrong: Justice AS Oka

Supreme Court judge Justice Abhay S. Oka, while delivering the Second Shyamala Pappu Memorial Lecture, opined that the faith of the common man in the judiciary has eroded considerably. The main reason, he said, is that the bar and bench are not able to provide proper access to quality justice and justice at a reasonable cost.“Maybe during last 75 years, in functions like this, where bar and bench were together, we kept on patting our own backs by saying the Judiciary is the last resort for common man…common man has faith in the judiciary. My personal view is that whatever faith was there, in maybe 1950, has eroded considerably due to various reasons. The main reason, of course, is that we are not able to provide proper access to justice. Quality justice and justice at a reasonable cost. Therefore, in my view, we have to find out where we have gone wrong.”He further also said that judges should not stay in an ivory tower. Speaking on access to justice, he said that the judiciary has not fulfilled the expectations of common citizens of India and is lagging far behind. “As a judge of the Bombay High Court and Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, even today, I firmly believe that judges should not stay in ivory towers. As a judges of Bombay High Court, I had number of opportunities to go to taluka places, to visit district places, interact with the lawyers, interact with litigants coming to the Courts…I have been interacting with all stakeholders, and my personal view, which I can gather from my interaction with all the stakeholders, is that the judiciary has not fulfilled the expectations of the common citizens of India. In fact, we are lagging far behind.”The instant lecture was delivered on “Access to justice in the context of 75 years of the Indian Constitution.” Justice KV Viswanathan and Supreme Court Bar Association President Adish Aggarwala were among other dignitaries. At the outset, Justice Oka clarified that he was expressing his personal view. “Please do not confuse between the views of the Supreme Court and my personal views.,” he said. Notably, at the end of the lecture, Justice Oka also stated that the idea of saying all this is to start the thinking process. Talking about access to justice, he said that the same is not achieved by simply filing a case in a Court of law or lodging a complaint with the police. Speaking on this line, he also said that we must look back and virtually conduct an audit of how the Courts have performed. This is to determine whether the Courts have achieved what the common man wanted it to do. “When we say access to justice, it has to be a quality and expeditious justice rendered at a reasonable cost. Merely allowing somebody to file a case does not mean that we have granted him access to justice. So, 75 years of existence of constitution, I always believe that we must look back and virtually conduct audit of how the Courts have performed to find out whether Courts have really achieved what common man wanted the Courts to do.,” Justice Oka stated. He spoke about several reasons for not fulfilling the expectations of the common man. One of the main reasons, according to him, was we neglected trial and district courts which are the primary courts in our system. “The first reason is that we neglected our trial and district courts…we have not given the importance which our trial and district courts deserve. There is one indication which will prove how we neglected these courts. For years together, we used to describe these courts as lower Courts, subordinate courts, etc…Now, there cannot be any lower Court as such. Every Court is a court.” He opined that for a common man who cannot afford to have multiple litigations, perhaps these are final courts. He also shared his insights on how civil and district court judges were the last class to receive pay commission benefits. “There were fifth sixth and seventh pay commission. Of course, the pay commission does not cover the judiciary. So, last fifth sixth and seventh pay commissions…after pay commission was implemented for government servants, the government thought it fit to amend the law and enhance the salary and renumeration payable to the judges of the constitutional courts. But in case of all three pay commissions, there was only one class of public servants which was the last to receive benefit of enhancement of paying and that was class of our civil and district court judges.” In this context, Justice Oka also referred to the recent Supreme Court order providing various amenities and perquisites to the judicial officers. Seemingly, Justice Oka was referring to the Apex court's decision in All India Judges Association v. UoI And Ors. Therein, the Court has directed the State Governments to pay the arrears to judges in terms of the payscales enhanced as per the recommendations of the Second National Judicial Pay Commission (SNJPC) by February...

Faith Of Common Man In Judiciary Has Eroded Considerably; Should Find Out Where We've Gone Wrong: Justice AS Oka

Gyanvi Khanna

The judiciary has not fulfilled the expectations of the common citizens of India, Justice Oka said.

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