NEW DELHI: “Lately, there has been a disturbing trend of some people campaigning through social media and newspaper articles insisting on what Supreme Court ruling or the order must be in a particular case.
And when the SC does not stick to their course, they resort to radical criticism of the SC and the judiciary, ”Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Thursday.
“Judges must be free to decide cases without the inhibitions that these people are trying to impose,” he added.
Delivery of justice it cannot be intended for the gallery, Prasad said, adding: “The use of terms like ‘judicial barbarism’ by those, whatever their status, is abhorrent and unacceptable.
The judiciary and judges should feel free to decide cases according to the law and their conscience, the minister said, adding that unleashing such criticism is an attempt to divert judges from their declared duty. Prasad’s comments came in the context of criticism of the court in certain quarters for privileging certain cases and failing to respond to others with the implicit suggestion that the CS was leaning toward government in the Center.
This sparked a heated debate about the “sanctity” of the SC, even when the attorney general approved the initiation of a contempt process against comedian Kunal Kamra for his “offensive” tweets in the Supreme Court of the Arnab goswami case.
Speaking in the same function on the occasion of Constitution Day, the attorney general KK Venugopal He said Courts of Appeal (CoA) should be established in four regions of the country to adjudicate appeals against higher court verdicts to give citizens better access to justice and alleviate the huge burden of the case in the CS to make it the court truly constitutional plan provided by the drafters of the Constitution
Venugopal said the SC was overwhelmed with requests about bail, rent disputes, land acquisition and marriage disputes, which could be heard by CoA for a final decision. “Each CoA should have around 15 judges, who should have similar eligibility qualifications as SC judges and would be selected by SC’s collegiate of judges headed by the Chief Justice of India,” he said.
“The creation of the CoA between the HC and the SC will allow the SC to hear petitions raising important constitutional issues and matters of national importance rather than mundane and regular appeals against the decisions of the HC.
Only then can the CS truly become a constitutional court as envisioned by the framers of our Constitution. Then I would hear 3,000 cases a year instead of the current 75,000 cases, “he added.
Otherwise, the cases would continue to take decades for final adjudication, Venugopal said. “If you have to wait two decades for a final verdict in a case, then justice would fail poor litigants and the middle class. The rich and businesses are not much affected by the delay in delivering justice,” he added .
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