{"id":33960,"date":"2018-10-30T15:12:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T09:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=33960"},"modified":"2018-10-30T15:12:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T09:42:32","slug":"is-the-supreme-court-facing-an-institutional-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/is-the-supreme-court-facing-an-institutional-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Supreme Court facing an institutional crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/is-the-supreme-court-facing-an-institutional-crisis\/article20493352.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is the Supreme Court facing an institutional crisis?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Presently, the Supreme Court is facing an institutional crisis on account of the most ferocious attack ever on the judiciary by the executive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Present crisis in Indian Judiciary:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Corruption in the judiciary.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The executive wants a judiciary that is beholden to it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Politicians and governments influence judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shortfall of judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most telling indicator of the assault on the judiciary is the non-appointment of judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absence of separate Commercial Courts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lack of expertise<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Poor dispute resolution mechanism.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Frequent transfer of judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lack of transparency.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expensive and delayed justice<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Frequent adjournments and indiscriminate use of writ jurisdiction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Second Judges Case:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1993, through Second Judges case, the Supreme Court appropriated the power to appoint judges to the High Courts and the Supreme Court by interpreting the word \u201cconsultation\u201d in Article 124(2) of the Constitution to mean concurrence of the Chief Justice of India for each and every appointment to the higher judiciary.<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Third Judges case, was a reference to the court from the then President of India seeking a clarification on certain aspects of the judicial appointments system, which is also known as the collegiums system.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Judiciary versus executive:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the very long, the executive has been \u2018itching\u2019 to wrest power back from the judges. The discourse on purported judicial activism, the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010 that lapsed on the dissolution of the 15the Lok Sabha, and the National Judicial Appointment Commission Act(NJAC), 2014 that was subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court with a majority of judges as violative of the basic structure doctrine.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Present controversy:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The registration of an FIR against a retired judge of the Odisha High Court and some other persons, for allegedly attempting to influence through extraneous means proceedings in the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In K. Veeraswami v. Union of India (1991), the Supreme Court laid down that no criminal case shall be registered under Section 154, Cr.P.C. against judge of the High Court, Chief Justice of High Court or judge of the Supreme Court unless the Chief Justice of India is consulted in the matter. If the CJI himself is the person whom the allegations of criminal misconduct are received, the government shall consult any other judge or judges of the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Way ahead:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Increase the number of judges, as per the international standards.<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Increase in the number of judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Enhancing the productivity of existing court infrastructure and human resources.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Productivity enhancement for handling cases more efficiently, that is, case flow management (CFM).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Creation of judicial infrastructure, all States and Union territories should have high courts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mechanism of accountability of judges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well-trained and specialized should be placed mainly in subordinate and district court, from where huge appeals pops up. All India Judicial commission could be a solution<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Increase and strengthen alternative dispute mechanisms like fast track courts, mobile courts, commercial courts<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More importantly tussle over MoP should be done away by improving the channels of communication between executive and legislature<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Usage of IT tools should be promoted, well integrated database across the judicial system reduces the time involved<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fair promotion of judges and scrapping the collegiums system.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Better case management and procedural reforms can go a long way in reducing case pendency.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Increase the number of national law schools to get even more lawyers into the system.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Conclusion:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court is considered as a temple of justice. The Constitution describes the judiciary as one of the three pillars of our democracy. This expression is an embodiment of the spirit of the highest court of the country. It is mostly the Supreme Court, along with the High Courts, that comes to the rescue of the common person and ensures that his or her faith in the rule of law is not shaken. Therefore, it is necessary that judiciary should be free from any political interference and work independently.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the Supreme Court facing an institutional crisis? Context: Presently, the Supreme Court is facing an institutional crisis on account of the most ferocious attack ever on the judiciary by the executive. Present crisis in Indian Judiciary: Corruption in the judiciary. The executive wants a judiciary that is beholden to it. Politicians and governments influence&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/is-the-supreme-court-facing-an-institutional-crisis\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is the Supreme Court facing an institutional crisis?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704890322},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}