Delhi CM cites work done, hopes to avoid headlines saying ‘HC raps govt’
The announcement to increase the remuneration of the law researchers comes as several Delhi HC lawyers moved Delhi HC seeking enforcement of 2023-approved hike in their remuneration to Rs 80,000.
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Delhi CM Rekha Gupta (File)Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Thursday hailed various initiatives undertaken by the BJP government in the Capital, since it was elected to power earlier this year, at an event in the High Court, as she underlined, “The government is working with better planning… The reason I’m listing these is so that one doesn’t have to read in the papers that ‘HC raps (the) Delhi government’.”
In response, however, Delhi Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Supreme Court’s Justice Vikram Nath emphasised that the governments are rapped in order to ensure better administration.
CM Gupta was speaking at an event at the Delhi HC, marking the launch of several information technology-led initiatives. She said, “Now the government and courts are not separate. In your initiatives, the Delhi government is going to assist you fully. This time, when I presented my Budget, I doubled the budget for courts compared to what used to be in earlier budgets, and we especially provisioned nearly Rs 200 crores for hybrid courts.”
“The accommodation issue that our judicial officers face — work will begin soon, and we have provisioned Rs 540 crore for it. We’ve also decided to provide four law researchers to each of our judges to assist them, and we have increased their remuneration from Rs 60-65,000 to Rs 80,000. Our Delhi government will also be providing free WiFi to all court complexes so that no one is inconvenienced owing to connectivity issues,” she said.
Delhi HC Chief Justice Upadhyaya, however, responded that the judiciary too is part of the state and “there’s no such thing as rapping the government”. “We are only making an endeavour to energise the other pillar of the state so that the common good can be achieved for the largest number of people of Delhi,” he said.
Justice Vikram Nath added, “The judiciary doesn’t work to oppose the government. We do our work and the government does its own work. If the judiciary feels the government is not functioning properly, we aid them by issuing directions to fix their system. So the raps by courts are for the government’s better administration, and not owing to some animosity.”
“We don’t rap the government for pleasure, we do it when it becomes a compulsion. We initially just ask questions. So the point is, governments will be rapped but do take it constructively,” Justice Nath asserted.
The announcement to increase the remuneration of the law researchers comes as several Delhi HC lawyers moved the Delhi HC seeking enforcement of the 2023-approved hike in their remuneration to Rs 80,000. At the time of hearing the plea, the Delhi HC had implored the Delhi government that “it must decide the matter”.
Other initiatives launched on Thursday included ‘eHRMS’, an online portal for judicial officers for facilitating administrative work such as appraisals and leave applications. Another initiative flagged off was ‘E-office’, an internal process management software launched at the HC on a pilot basis.
Among the initiatives was also onboarding the MCD Appellate Tribunal, located at Tis Hazari complex, as well as the Juvenile Justice Board on the online e-courts portal.
The Delhi High Court will also run a pilot project in six of its courts with a ‘mute’ function on the Webex moderator, which will be a level of screening for those logging in online during court proceedings, Justice Prathiba Singh, who is chairperson of the IT and Artificial Intelligence Committee and Accessibility Committee of the Delhi HC, said.
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