Include criminal justice system in Plan budget 8212; Experts

Planning Commission, in its Five Year Plans, has never given place to CJS which had all along remained on the 8220;non-plan budget8221; of the government, despite its importance, D R Singh, head of Department of Criminolgy and Correctional Administration, Tata Institute of Social Sciences TISS told newsmen here.

Singh said none of the post-Independent Five Year Plan reports including the 8220;approach paper to the Ninth Plan 1997-2002,8221;prepared by the government, incoporates CJS, despite its importance for the welfare of the country.

8220;What is needed to improve the situation is to put the CJS in planned budget with an appropriate advisor to look into the problem of deteriorating crime situation and plan for the well-being of people of the country in respect of crime and fear of crime,8221; Singh said. S S Puri, Additional Director General of Police, Maharashtra, said at present there is 8220;docket of explosion8221; in the courts and far too many cases are coming in for adjudication that can be disposed of in a reasonable time frame only with the creation of more courts. 8220;In fact, the Law Commission should determine judge-case ratio, so that when cases exceed the ratio, more courts can be created,8221; Puri said. In order to have efficient functioning of CJS, all its components should become part of plan-subject, he added.

Additional Solicitor General, Western Zone, Dhananjay Chandrachud said the problem faced by CJS is at the stage ofinvestigation. 8220;It is necessary to modernise the infrastructure of investigation with scientific methods,8221; he said. He stressed that 8220;government should not think it as an unproductive investment as it would help in creating an environment for trade and business to flourish.

8220;For any orderly transactions, peaceful co-existence is very important and therefore, sufficient resources have to be made available for investigating arms of CJS and also for adjudicative of the system,8221; Chandrachud said.Crime is on the increase in the country constantly and more visible is terrorism, insurgency, drug trafficking, smuggling of arms and ammunition and other organised crimes.

Singh said crime has always been a neglected area for the government, although it is considered as a barometer of social health. The crime rate could be brought down to a certain level and concerted efforts on the part of the government to prevent and control crime were needed, he said.

The number of cases in various High Courts and SupremeCourt run in lakhs. The Union law Minister Ram Jethmalani recently mentioned that there are about 2.34 crore pending criminal cases in the country. In Mumbai High Court alone there are more than a lakh pending criminal cases, according to Chief Justice Y K Sabrahwal.

Satish Maneshinde, a Mumbai High Court advocate said the government has all along given undue importance to legislature and judiciary has never received proper allocation of funds.

8220;In order to strengthen the judiciary as well as CJS, planning needs rethinking in allocation of funds and improving human resource through quality and quantity of judges and also better salary structure for judges,8221; Maneshinde said.

For a better human resource development in the judiciary system, judges could be trained on the same lines as the Indian Police Service or the Indian Administrative Services. 8220;Select young lawyers 25 to 30 years and train them,8221; he added.