Essay on Indian Judicial System and Its problems : To regulate any society„ community, state or country there is a need of law, which is set of tradition, culture, custom and code of legislation. The law states a clear bifurcation of what is just and unjust. In ancient India, law was related to dharma and maintaining dharma was considered to be primary duty of king as he performed the judicial role and was also considered as a messenger of God.
Essay on Indian
Judicial System and Its problems for UPSC
To regulate any society„ community, state or country there
is a need of law, which is set of tradition, culture, custom and code of
legislation. The law states a clear bifurcation of what is just and unjust. In
ancient India, law was related to dharma and maintaining dharma was considered
to be primary duty of king as he performed the judicial role and was also
considered as a messenger of God. But the things have been changing from
ancient to medieval and medieval to modern periods.
India is the largest democracy in the world, where judiciary
is separated from another pillar of democracy that is from legislative and
executive, so that courts can perform independently without being interfered.
This is the reason why people of India have faith in Indian judicial system. To
give people easy and fair justice there is provision of various layers of
judiciary. It comprises of Supreme Court of India which is the apex body of
judiciary high courts which perform as apex court of the states followed by
district and session courts in judicial districts, into which states are
divided. In lower ring of the system there is a court of civil and criminal
courts. In spite of this, there are various other courts like Lok Adalats,
consumer courts, family courts, Gram Nyayalayas, fast track courts and e-courts
to ensure the justice to the citizens. Indian judicial system is an ardent
believer and follower of the principle of `Satyamev Jayate', which apparently
means that truth, always wins.
Constitution of India provides the guarantee of justice to
all. Indian Constitution Article 14 states "Equality before Law".
It is true that in recent times people have lost their faith
in judicial system, because judiciary is not able to provide justice on time
and thus the saying 'justice delayed is justice denied has been rather real in
the Indian scenario. Most of the cases are pending before the courts for more
than twenty years and this is a very long time as it requires more resources to
fight the case. In such cases the victim, witness or charged person dies and
many of the evidences get lost before the completion of the case. According to
the recent survey, there are many under trial poor people who are behind the
bars as they do not have money to pay for their hail. Many of them are still in
prison even they have already spent more time than the actual punishment of
their offence. It means that wealthy people get bail easily. In 2012, a Supreme
Court bench itself mentioned that people's faith in judiciary is decreasing at
an alarming rate.
The Indian courts faces dual problem
(a) Crisis of judges- In lower courts of the
country, twenty one per cent seats are vacant. This is already lower than our
population ratio. Among the biggest states, in Gujarat forty per cent seats are
vacant and in Bihar thirty eight per cent seats are vacant. Among union
territory, in Delhi thirty eight per cent seats are vacant. In North-eastern
states in almost fifty per cent, Meghalaya and in Tripura thirty five percent
posts are vacant. High Courts and Supreme Court are also facing the problem of
shortage of judges. Recently, the Supreme Court and High Courts faced the
problem of judges because of the fight on the matter of Collegiums and National
Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).
(b) Burden of
pending cases- in a recent statistics, only Supreme Court has more than sixty
two thousand cases pending before them as on 1 January 2015. For the High
courts, the number pending cases increased to 44 lakhs at the end of year 2013.
The condition is worst for the lower courts, where 2.6 crore cases are pending.
The reasons for delay in justice are:
(a) Inadequate judges in court room.
(b) Granting adjournment unnecessarily. This delays the
process of justice.
(c) Absence or work culture.
(d) Lack of infrastructure.
(e) Low level of awareness among the people regarding laws.
(f) Endless process of amendment of laws.
(g) Unnecessary interference of the judiciary in matters of
legislative and executive that that is judicial activism.
(h) Corruption.
(i) Vacation of the courts.
(j) Older way of maintaining the files and records.
(k) Lack of co-ordination among stake holders. It results in
communication gap.
To ensure the fair judgment, the vacancy crisis in the
judicial system should be addressed by recruiting the judges at regular
interval. To address the problem of recruitment, there is need of an All India
judicial Service. India is having eleven judges per million populations which
are among the lowest in the world. There is a need of establishing more courts
and to increase the number of judges according to the population ratio. Making
people aware of judiciary, laws and legal approach are some of the changes
through which people's faith in judiciary can be restored. Maintaining the
files and records of court so that they are easily accessible to the people;
can also let people rely upon the judiciary. Small disputes should be resolved
among the people by co-operation and mutual understanding in the community.
Pending cases should be solved by the help of fast track courts.
The delay in treating the cases by the Indian judiciary is
not new to us, but it does not mean that we should start portraying it as of no
use. From last six decades, Indian judiciary has worked hard for the people to
ensure justice to them and on many occasions it has very well set an example
for the world. Also, the ultimate goal of Indian Constitution is to ensure the
social, cultural, political and economic justice to the people with the help of
various institutions established by the Constitution. Among all institutions,
judiciary is most trustworthy. Hence, poor can expect fair judgment from Indian
judicial system. In this regard, we can say there all is fair in life, even if
there are small delays in delivering justice.
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