A systematic and scientific performance audit of the judiciary in India has to be done by experts before making any statement on its success or failure in 75 years of Independence, said Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka, a judge of the Supreme Court here on Saturday.
“We cannot say either that the judiciary has done a great job or it has completely failed as the truth is that performance lies somewhere in the middle. The proper way to assess its performance is through a performance audit,” he said while making it clear that one cannot make an off-the-cuff remark on performance of the judiciary.
He was delivering a talk on “India’s judicial system in its 75 th year and the vision to build it as the best justice delivery system in the word – the role of judges and lawyers in this endeavour” after inaugurating the official website of the Advocates’ Association, Bengaluru.
Making it clear that he was presenting the views not in his official capacity but based on his experience of 39 years in the legal profession, both as a lawyer and as a judge, Justice Oka said that several sections of the society are yet to have access to justice delivery system for various reasons.
Speed of justice delivery
A grey area for the judiciary is the speed of delivery of justice, he said, while pointing out that country’s judge-to-population ratio is 21 for every million population as on December 2021 when the need for 50 judges per million was required way back in 2002.
However, he said that the judiciary has performed well in the area of ensuring that welfare laws were implemented by the executives as the high courts and the apex court have issued continuous mandamus to achieve this goal.
Justice Oka said that the justice-delivery system can be improved by the use of information technology even at the taluk level and the judiciary can achieve more in the next 25 years than what it has achieved in the past 75 years of both the lawyers and the judges turn their minds to the common man-centirc issues. “Introspection and innovation is needed for constant improvement of the judiciary,” he said.
Pending for 60 years
What moral right do we (judges and lawyers) have to celebrate 75 years of independence when there are cases pending for the past 60 years in a court in Belagavi, asked Justice B. Veerappa, a judge of the High Court.
