‘A wrong message goes around the world’
The Law Minister said that this sends a wrong message across the world. I want to make it clear that there is no problem between the different parts of the country. These are signs of strong democratic work, which are not a crisis. Pointing to some media reports regarding alleged differences between the government and the Supreme Court or the legislature and the judiciary, the Union minister said that we should understand that we are a democracy. There is bound to be some difference of opinion in terms of some points of view, but you cannot have conflicting positions. It doesn’t mean confrontation. We are the largest democracy in the world.
Support for the independence of the Indian Judiciary
He said the Center would support the independence of the Indian judiciary. Describing the bench and the bar as two sides of the same coin, he called for working together and ensuring that the court premises are not divided. He said, “One cannot exist without the other. There should be proper etiquette and congenial atmosphere in the court. “No one can think alike,” he said. “We are not ruled by any dictatorial king, so differences cannot be called a crisis of Indian democracy. We can criticize each other but when it comes to national interest, we should be united.
Appreciation of courts in Tamil Nadu
He said his ministry is actively working on developing a common core vocabulary to ensure that common people receive orders in their respective languages. It will have some common usages in Indian languages, which are purely technical in nature. Appreciating the courts in Tamil Nadu for their excellent performance in providing justice to the people during the pandemic. He said that the judicial infrastructure in Tamil Nadu is better than many states in India. Rijiju said that he recently visited Puducherry. He found that the kind of work being done to improve the judicial structure. That is possible only when the judiciary and the government together understand the issues and try to resolve them.
Some shortcomings in the understanding of the government
Talking about the allocation of funds, he said that last year the government had allocated Rs 9,000 crore for district and other courts in the state. His department is pushing to use the money to demand more. Rijiju said that in some states, I felt that there were some shortcomings in the understanding of the need of the court and the government. He said that the Government is in favor of making the Indian Judiciary completely paperless in the near future. He said that with the advent of technical support, everything can be harmonized so that the judge does not have to adjourn cases for lack of evidence. The work is in progress and I feel we are moving towards a larger resolution (with respect to the pendency).
there can be a separation of powers
The law minister said there may be separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary but that does not mean they should not work together. He said that we should work as a team to identify the pending cases and ensure that challenges like pendency are dealt with. He said that each judge in India is handling 50-60 cases daily. If I have to handle so many cases, the mental pressure will be tremendous. That is why there is sometimes a persistent criticism that judges are incapable of delivering justice, which is not true.
Use Tamil language in your proceedings
He said that the disposal of cases has been done expeditiously. However, the number of reported cases was also high. He said that the only way is to have better infrastructure and better system and strengthen the Indian Judiciary. On providing justice to the common man, Rijiju said he would be happy to see all courts in Tamil Nadu use Tamil language in their proceedings. “There is a challenge in the High Court…Tamil is a classical language and we are proud of it. We would love to see it used. With the advancement of technology, advancement of legal scripts, Tamil language may someday be used in the Supreme Court as well.