Legal perspective

The Union government must recognise that Chief Justice Anand8217;s request for time to work out the judges8217; collegium system of appointments and high court transfers is valid. He took over a court that was battered and bruised by the ha-wala, environment, Ay-odhya, appointments and transfer issues. He had to carry the given team with him. He did this by a fair distribution of work and opportunities. Cases th-at attracted public and media attention were distributed by him to ot-her benches. The trust won by this self-denial was buttressed further by giving to other judges the opportunities of foreign travel on invitations from foreign courts or judicial associations. The immediately retiring judge got top priority for the foreign trip. With this the ChiefJustice ended the influence of a handful of senior advocates and their associations on the issue of foreign travel by apex court judges.

Through the committee system he tr-ied to distribute various aspects of the co-urt8217;s functioning to his colleagues. The result has been an overall decline of tension in the apex court. Whenever he found a bench going slow on human rights issues he tried to help by reorganising the be-nches without displacing the presiding judge. To ensure continuity he has tried to give more importance to senior most ju-dges who are in the line for Chief Justic-eship. With more smiling judicial faces, a coherent participatory team and only about two years left of his term, he probably feels that he is at a take-off stage to ensure proper appointments. The Pr-ime Minister, as the head of a coalition go-vernment, should be able to understand and appreciate this achiev-ement.

The questions that the Prime Minister sh-ould address are: what stops his government from making public a wrongappointment suggested by the judicial col- legium, why is there no insistence on the setting up of a system to measure ability among high court judges, why are 38 recommendations of the collegium for appointments pending with his government for a year or more? And why does the government appoint lawyers to the court as a matter of patronage? A highly sophisticated legal business mafia is operating in the courts to handle government cases. The government can keep quiet on this only at its own expense. The Union government pays for legal aid as sanctioned by Parliament but does not make audit reports of the same public.

The Chief Justice8217;s cry for more properly equipped courts and judicial manpower at the district level goes unhee-ded. But more is not the simple answer. The Prime Minister8217;s hint on the need for a national debate on the ethical content of the judiciary is valid. The apex co-urt judges already have a Code of Cond-uct. But the Code and its operation is a secret. Today large parts of the Bar feeldeprived because they cannot or do not invite judges to seminars, lunches and di-nners here or abroad. In fifty years the apex judiciary has travelled a long way from simple farewell parties. The key to delayed justice lies in the administrative failure of metropolitan high courts to discharge their constituti-onal duty of a public service oriented management of the district courts and their own courts. Transfers by high courts of th-eir district judiciary and transfers of high court judges themselves give serious signals of injustice. Consequently, high co-urts today run legal aid systems that do little service.

Even the legal aid directives of the Chief Justice of India remain unimplemented. The basic reason is the abse-nce of transparency in judicial administration, appointments and transfers. Ev- en the current All India Chief Justices Co-nference is a secret. But why is the Union government silent on this? For the citizen a law unenforced by the government is as bad as an unenforced judgment or legalaid directive. Financial autonomy without transparency means nothing.