Law and Disorder

Context: Several inadequacies in the justice delivery system lie hidden as disproportionate attention is given to the Supreme Court. A few important ones are dealt with below.

Inadequacies in the Justice delivery system of India

• Inadequate spending on judiciary: On increasing salaries and providing better court infrastructure.
• Poor implementation of the Legal Services Authority Act, 1987.
  • Under this law, all women, irrespective of their financial status, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and children are entitled to free legal aid.
  • Issue: it has become a dead letter due to little effort on part of successive governments to provide a task force of carefully selected, well-trained and reasonably paid advocates.
  • Best practice: the system of legal aid in the U.K. identifies and funds several independent solicitor offices to provide such services.
• Poor judge-population ratio: (one of the most important yardsticks to measure the health of legal system)
  • India has only 19 judges/million population, of these at any given point, at least 1/4^th is always vacant.
    • The US has 100, Canada has about 75 and the U.K. has about 50
  • All India Judges Association v. Union of India (2001): Supreme Court had directed the Government of India to increase the judge-population ratio to at least 50 per million population within five years from the date of the judgment. This has not been implemented.
• Access to justice: Anita Kushwaha v. Pushpa Sadan (2016)
  • Supreme court held that denial of access to justice will result in a compromise in the quality of human life, hence violative of a person’s fundamental right to life.
  • The court pointed out four important components of access to justice:

1. 1. 1. Need for adjudicatory mechanism.
      2. Accessibility in terms of distance.
      3. the process of adjudication must ensure Speedy justice
      4. Affordability of justice

• Other issues:
  • Increasing tribunalisation of the justice delivery process.
  • The extortionate court fees payable to access justice in civil suits in some States.
  • The poor integration of technology into the system.

Conclusion: The executive, judiciary and the legislature — must draw out a comprehensive national policy and road map for clearing backlogs and making the concept of speedy and affordable justice a reality.