Forget Right to Justice; Just Do What is Right

..or how Justice delayed is justice denied.

Some of you must have read the recent news-report of a bill proposed to be tabled in Parliament to ensure “time-bound justice for citizens“. The bill has some interesting provisions, including

…measures like discharge of an accused in a traffic offence if trial is pending for more than two years due to non-service of summons. “In case of trial of offences compoundable under the Indian Penal Code, or any other law in force, pending for more than two years, the court shall discharge the accused if the trial has not commenced and close the case“

Press reports mention that the

…bill will provide for speedy and cost effective trials by laying down a 60-90 day timeline for inquiry and a three-year deadline for completion of court proceedings.

This should be cause for celebration, I guess…Or should it? Is the solution to too many laws and a clogged up judicial system, another law (or another “Right”)? As Joginder Singh writes in “Gift-wrapped bunkum“

…Of late, the Union Government has exhibited a penchant for regurgitating Fundamental Rights already embodied in the Constitution in the form of New Rights, as if it was doing a favour to the people by providing them with newer and unprecedented entitlements. Take for example the National Employment Guarantee Act which promises wages that are so low that one is destined to starve and even that paltry sum of money is siphoned off, or the Right to Education which is meaningless given the inadequate number of schools, lack of proper class rooms and the absence of teachers. The proposed Right to Justice Bill is the latest addition to the list.

Without ensuring that there is adequate infrastructure to implement laws, if by simply promulgating them development could have been achieved, India would have been a heaven by now.

Our policy-makers (and well-minded civic activists) often confuse symptoms with causes..and this bill is a great illustration of that. Instead of remedies to fix a broken system, what we get is another law that mandates a 3-year deadline for disposal of cases. One doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out what happens if the time-frame is exceeded. The over-burdened system gets further swamped with even more cases…

The problem is actually quite simple: We have too many laws and the Government is the biggest litigant.

Another law (or “right”) will almost certainly make the situation worse. As Joginder Singh writes:

Seventy per cent of the over three crore cases that are pending in Indian courts involve the Government as either petitioner or respondent. To make matters worse, 90 per cent of those cases fail and should not have been filed in the first instance, as the Prime Minister has pointed out.

The problem of too many laws and a over-zealous government is compounded by the acute manpower scarcity. As Joginder Singh points out in his article, UP – with a population of 200 million – has only 65 sitting High Court judges (95 of the sanctioned 160 posts are vacant)! Not surprisingly, its number of pending cases in  the state is approaching 10 Lakhs. Depressingly, 30% of criminal trials have been pending for 10 years, of which 9 % for more than 20 years.

More depressingly, the Supreme Court itself is not hopeful about speedy justice. As a 2-judge bench observed recently:

The system has already become sick. What can be the expectation of the common man for speedy justice? Even in the Supreme Court, a special leave petition takes eight years to reach final hearing.

The backlog is pervasive. For example, a recent report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (SARC) titled, “Ethics in Governance” noted:

…election petitions remain pending for years and in the meanwhile even the full term of the House expires, thus rendering them infructuous.

This even as Sections 86(6) and 86(7) of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 say that “the High Court shall endeavour to dispose of an election petition within six months and also as far as practicably possible conduct proceedings on a day-to-day basis”.

Given this situation, shouldn’t the focus and emphasis be more on “fewer laws and better implementation?” As Tavleen Singh writes:

We do not need another law. We need a justice system that implements our existing laws speedily and effectively. If the Lokpal can have the power to fast track justice, why not our judges?

Former Chief Justice of India Justice J S Verma recently observed that, “We have enough laws, in fact the maximum in the world. The problem is in faithful implementation.”

The government would do right to focus on that. instead of bringing in another law disguised as a “right”.  We dont need more laws. We need a better justice system. We need faster implementation. We need accountability. More laws will not solve our woes; they will add to them.

Related Posts: Do we Really Need a Jan LokPal? (and somewhat related) “Har Shakh Pe Ullu Baitha Hai“