SC to bypass govt,rebuild crumbling courts on its own-Says Courts Condition Has Led It To Ignore PMs Advice On Policy

New Delhi: Infrastructure of trial courts is one issue where Supreme Court is not going to heed Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs advice to higher judiciary not to venture into policy decisions as that fell within the exclusive domain of the executive. Chief Justice of India S H Kapadia,presiding over a three-judge Bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam and K S Radhakrishnan,made an overt reference to the PMs advice and said it was making an exception and foraying into the policy domain because for decades judicial infrastructure of trial courts had been in a shambles,threatening to put rule of law in jeopardy.The court said rule of law was part of the basic structure of Constitution.Justice delivery system is the bedrock of rule of law,which is held to be the basic structure of the Constitution and it is our view that in the absence of adequate judicial infrastructure,particularly for subordinate courts,it would not be possible to sustain rule of law in this country, the Bench said in its order on Monday.

Explaining again why it was venturing into forbidden territory,the SC said it was aware that judiciary should not be passing orders relating to financial issues.But to keep rule of law alive,there was an urgent need to pump in money,especially from what was being collected as court imposed fines and fees. Rule of law assures the citizen of an effective justice system and judicial infrastructure is the cornerstone of justice delivery system without which rule of law will fail, it said.Reiterating it would go ahead with its plan to constitute a special purpose vehicle from money collected from court fees and fines to revamp judicial infrastructure,the Bench decided to start the exercise of auditing infrastructure in Karnataka and AP.

It said,We find from the statements submitted by Karnataka,through the monitoring committee,that as far as court houses are concerned,414 projects are in the pipeline,whereas for residential quarters,282 projects are pending clearance. Similar statistics for AP revealed that 22 and 16 proposals respectively were pending clearance of government.We direct the chief secretary of the states concerned to put on affidavit as to since when all these proposals are pending and the reasons why, the Bench said while giving two weeks to file a status report.
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(source-toi)