SUBHASH CHANDRA AGRAWAL,
India is perhaps the only country where judges recommend to appoint judges in higher judiciary resulting in a constant tussle between legislature and judiciary. Collegium-system at Supreme Court for recommending appointments and transfers at Supreme Court and High Courts is also at times under criticism for some selected families observed as dominating Indian judiciary. It may also not be advisable to hand over appointment in higher judiciary in hands of political hands of legislature. A balanced approach can be achieved by instituting a high-powered National Judicial Commission having retired Supreme Court judges as member-nominees of President, Prime Minister, Leader of largest Opposition Party in Lok Sabha, Chief Justice of India (CJI) and Bar Council of India with Chief Vigilance Commissioner as ex-officio member of the Commission with Union Law Secretary as ex-officio member-secretary of such a Commission. CJI may head such a high-powered Commission. Recommendations of such a Commission should be final, and sent directly to President of India for a formal endorsement. Retirement-age of High Court judges should be raised to 65 years to be at par with that of Supreme Court judges to avoid any chances of lobbying for promotion as Supreme Court judges only because to be in system for 3 extra years. Reforms for future may be there to establish Indian Judicial Service (IJS) on lines of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) where those passing the tough competition may be appointed first at District Courts and ultimately to be elevated to High Courts and Supreme Court.
To prevent chances of influencing locally appointed High Court judges either through their former bar-colleagues or local relations, all High Court judges should be compulsorily appointed outside from their home-states. To eliminate political bias in judiciary, it should be ensured that no person may be appointed as judge with an active political background. Even after retirement if any judge joins politics, he must lose all his post-retirement benefits. No judge should be given any post-retirement job anywhere after two years of retirement as was rightly advocated by the then Opposition Leader in Rajya Sabha during earlier regime. It should be ensured that any person seated as CJI must get at least one year to be on post before he attains retirement-age of 65 years. Indian system is witness of contrast cases with Justice Kamal Narain Singh having been CJI for just 18 days (25.11.1991 to 12.12.1991) while Justice Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud having been CJI for more than seven years (22.02.1978 to 11.07.1985).
Suggested National Judicial Commission should also be empowered to probe all complaints against judges including Chief Justices of Supreme Court and High Courts, abolishing cumbersome and impractical system of removal of tainted judges through impeachment. Findings of the Commission and punishment suggested for such guilty-found judges should be endorsed for action with all post-retirement benefits of such tainted judges abolished. Even a senior Advocate associated with first-ever impeachment-case of Justice V Ramaswamy had expressed impeachment-process to be highly impractical. Tax-payers’ hard-earned money was wasted in paying a judge of a High Court for no work after the Supreme Court Collegium decided to recommend his impeachment. Judges are also human-beings picked up from the same society which has both honest and dishonest persons. Chairs of judges are not made from some divine material which can turn some undesirable one found entry as judge to turn fair.
Pay, perks of existing and retired judges should be decided by Pay-Commissions at time of deciding new pay-scales for government-employees. No extra-ordinary privileges should be provided to retired judges which presently also include life-time domestic help for them and their spouses. Since pensions to government-employees has been done away, same system should be there for those in judiciary (and even in legislature).
It should be made compulsory for all judges from Supreme Court to trial-courts to record reason for recusal from the case on the file. Moreover, any such recusal should be informed immediately on setting up the bench or listing of such a case before a judge so that a new bench may be there for hearing without requiring any postponement of the hearing. A judge of Delhi High Court once recused herself from hearing a case where she herself issued notice to former President Pranab Mukerji after admitting a writ filed by some individual urging some contents of the book authored by the former President to be deleted. At times judges of higher courts have written to sitting Chief Justice of India about pressure and influence especially also from politicians. Making it compulsory to give reasons for recusal will prevent pressure and influence on judges.
Courts at times give very lengthy judgements running into hundreds or thousands of pages which are practically not read by even litigants themselves. Such lengthy court-verdicts are show-pieces for libraries and are read only by researchers and select lawyers. India should adopt practice of countries where there is a limit on number of pages of court-verdicts which is different for Supreme Court, High Courts and Trial Courts. Or else, every lengthy court-verdict exceeding say 50 pages may be compulsorily accompanied by a precise version with a limit of say 50 pages to be simultaneously issued and posted on website on date of judgement itself. All verdicts must be announced within say one month of completion of hearing. In case a bench decides to recommend higher bench to hear the case, it should be within one month of first listing the case before the bench recommending for a larger bench.
Biggest weakness of our justice-delivery-system is liberal ex-party stay-orders followed by frequent adjournments in courts which the main and foremost reason of ever-increasing huge pendency of cases in courts resulting in justifying the proverb Justice-Delayed-Is-Justice Denied. This is despite the fact that several Division Benches of Supreme Court have observed and rightly too of the bitter reality that at times those having taken ex-party stay-orders seeking frequent adjournments ultimately lose the cases.
Long summer vacations in courts were designed by erstwhile British rulers to save British judges in India from severe hot weather of this country and also to facilitate them to visit their homeland in England. This costly facility unfortunately continues in free India even after 75 years of independence, that too with long pendency of court-cases. Long-pending recommendation of Law Commission for scrapping long court-vacations should be implemented. Courts should adopt normal government-calendars for holidays abolishing system of week-long vacations for religious festivals apart from long winter and summer vacations.
Whole system of continuing naming High Courts is confusing where some High Courts are still named after cities where these are situated. Indian cities Bombay, Madras, Allahabad have since been renamed as Mumbai, Chennai and Prayag respectively long time back. But High Courts located in these cities are still officially named after old names of these cities. System should be that names of High Courts may get auto-changed with change in names of cities. Best is to end the British legacy by naming all High Courts after names of states rather than on cities. Proposed legislation should incorporate feature that names of High Courts may be automatically changed with change in name of states or cities without needing any separate legislation.
