SPEECH BY HER EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, SHRIMATI PRATIBHA DEVISINGH PATIL, ON THE OCCASION OF INAUGURATION OF A SEMINAR ON JUDICIAL REFORMS ORGANISED BY THE CONFEDERATION OF INDIAN BAR

New Delhi, 23 February 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Having been an erstwhile member of the Bar, it is a unique honour to be present amongst persons of great erudition, acumen and experience. My greetings to all of you.

With a lot of pride, we may recall that the Bar was not only in the forefront of the freedom struggle but later made invaluable contributions in envisioning our Constitution. Those legal stalwarts included Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Pt. Nehru, Sardar Patel, Shri G.B. Pant, Shri C.R. Das, Shri Prakasam, Shri K.M. Munshi and Smt. G. Durgabai to name only a few. And today, I congratulate the Confederation of Indian Bar for continuing the rich tradition of service to the nation by the legal profession by undertaking this constructive and timely initiative of organizing this Conference. I am confident that the distilled wisdom emerging from the thought-provoking deliberations of the trained legal minds would provide a clear direction in outlining a creative roadmap for comprehensive judicial reforms towards a more sensitive and responsive judiciary.

Our freedom struggle culminated in the victory for the Rule of Law, for the values of equality, for wholesome life with dignity and justice. The Constituent Assembly had fashioned an independent judiciary as one of the trinities of our democratic framework. Such was the sacred trust that the founding fathers of our Constitution had reposed in our judicial machinery. It is equally important that a system our forefathers so carefully and painstakingly built for us sustains itself with its reputation unsullied, with its efficiency pegged at the highest level, marching from strength to strength in the service of the nation.

I must say that the judiciary in India has acquitted itself commendably. Making singular contributions to our jurisprudence, our judiciary through its wise and creative interpretations has been successful in ensuring that the medium of law adapts itself to the needs of changing times in furthering truth and social good. The care, diligence and empathy with which the judiciary protects even a lone individual who has truth on his side invests the judiciary with a superior purpose and a higher moral authority. It is this progressive and humanitarian role of our judiciary and the judicial caliber that has earned international acclaim.

This august gathering would agree with me that the word 'majesty' spontaneously gravitates and attaches itself to the concept of justice. It follows therefrom that a very heavy responsibility is cast on the judicial fraternity to uphold the majesty of justice in all its magnificence. Courts are respected as temples of justice and the judicial fraternity regarded as custodians of law and dispensers of justice. This precious trust cannot be allowed to be eroded.

After more than six decades since our independence, time has come when we need to seriously introspect whether our judicial machinery has lived up to its expectations of walking the enlightened way by securing complete justice to all and standing out as the beacon of truth, faith and hope. Admittedly, the realm of judicial administration is not without its own share of inadequacies and blemishes. But we need not despair. We can overcome these challenges through the process of judicial reforms and ensure delivery of speedy and quick, high quality and pure justice at affordable costs.

The foremost problem to be tackled is the huge swell in the volume of litigation. Congestion in courts has become a daunting challenge. Case disposals are excruciatingly time consuming. This agonizing delay has rendered the common man's knock on the doors of justice a frustrating experience. This has ominous portents. We cannot allow a situation where the common man is tempted to take law into his own hand and subscribe to the deviant culture of the lynch mob. The formal adjudicatory machinery has to reign supreme. We talk incessantly about delays but now the time has arrived to launch a crusade against the scourge of arrears. Both the Bar and the Bench as equal partners in the administration of justice must address themselves to this problem.

The delays may be attributed to multifarious reasons - intricacies of procedures, prolonging cases and unending process of appeals. The ratio of judges to population is yet another reason. We have only 10.5 judges per million population leading to overloading of the judges. Though tribunals have been set up, they have generated their own backlogs.

We need to have in place a judicial machinery which is easily accessible and dispenses affordable and incorruptible justice to the people. Towards this endeavour, there is a strong case for making some of our legal procedures simple, streamlined, rational, easily understandable and commonsensical. Amendments of procedures however, have to be made carefully so as to ensure quick justice while safeguarding that fair play, equity and good conscience does not become a casualty. Speedy but faulty justice is no justice at all.

No judicial reform will be complete without an alert, active and a humane Bar. Our country can boast of a vast pool of legal talent, the second largest community of lawyers in the world. Lawyers are trustees of justice for us all and they must set high standards of probity and rectitude.

The access of citizens to law remains limited due to prohibitive costs of quality legal advice. It is commonplace to hear that law has become the luxury of the rich. Legal aid can go a long way in helping the indigents secure justice. The present legal aid support system needs to be improved and legal-aid lawyers given better and prompt remuneration.

Equally important is the need to galvanize the judicial processes by modernizing them. There is a need to weed out judicial processes which have become otiose and outlived their utility. The potential of Information and Communication Technology must be utilized to its maximum. Court records can be digitized to improve the productivity and efficiency of the courts. I believe that computerization of the Registry of the Supreme Court has had its beneficial effects in slashing down arrears and facilitated scientific docket management. E-filing and video conferencing by dispensing with physical appearance saves precious time and resources and makes justice more easily accessible and a less expensive option. With the right efforts, paperless courtrooms can become a distinct possibility, which in turn can guarantee greater transparency, wider access, speedy disposal, reduce corruption and ensure better quality of justice. I understand that the government has approved a Rs. 442 crore scheme for computerizing all district and subordinate courts in India and for upgrading the ICT infrastructure of the Supreme Court and the High Courts to be implemented in two years.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) needs to be encouraged. Though it cannot aspire to substitute the formal courts, it can play a significant supplementary and complementary role. Rather than relying solely on the protracted rigmarole of full trial under an adversarial system, fostering of amicable and consensual settlement of disputes through the ADR mechanism can be both a swift and cost-effective method of dispute resolution. I recently had the opportunity of interacting with the Bangalore Mediation Centre set up by the High Court of Karnataka. It was encouraging to find that over the past one year, 86 mediators had settled more than 1,000 cases with the average time spent per case being 131 minutes and the average number of sessions being 1.81. This is worthy of emulation in other places. There is a felt need of developing trained manpower for this task and creating awareness about the utility of ADR.

We need to think seriously on how to invest early finality to litigation so as to provide prompt, complete and near-final relief at the level of trial courts.

The government has already taken several initiatives on the path of judicial reforms. 1562 Fast Track Courts have been set up which have disposed off more than 18 lakh cases transferred to them. 190 family courts, established in various parts of the country have speedily settled matrimonial disputes through reconciliation. The Gram Nyayalayas Bill has been introduced to set up more trial courts at the intermediate panchayat level. The welcome feature is that the procedures have been kept simple and flexible so that cases can be heard and disposed of within 90 days. It is also envisaged that these courts would be mobile to achieve the goal of providing justice to people at their doorsteps. The training and orientation of the judiciary especially in frontier areas of knowledge like bio-genetics, IPR and cyber laws needs attention.

Time has come when we as stakeholders, without being unduly touchy and sensitive to criticism, have to collectively introspect the causes of the ills of judicial administration and find solutions squarely. Only then posterity will remember us that we did our duty to our nation and the citizenry to the best of our ability, conscientiously, honestly and purposefully.

I hope fruitful suggestions will come out of the deliberations at this Seminar over the next two days.

Thank You.