Convocation address in the honour of awarding honorary doctorate to Justice V.R Krishna Iyer
13 OCT 2010
The National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS),
Kochi
I am delighted to participate in the convocation ceremony of the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, in the honor of awarding honorary doctorate to Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer. My greetings to Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer for his contribution to the national development and the right royal recognition of NUALS in the form of honorary doctorate. Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer has many achievements to his credit in Legal system in High court of Kerala and the Supreme Court of India. His contribution to the Government system has brought many significant changes in law, power, prisons, irrigation, social welfare in the Government of Kerala. He was the originator of Kerala Land Reforms Act, which transformed the land holding pattern among the people of the State of Kerala. He has written many books focusing Law, justice system, social mission and societal transformation have immense societal value which has brought awareness to millions of people. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer has strived for speedy justice, transparent justice upholding the societal values in his judgement. My greetings to Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer for this unique contribution and his work towards the societal development by creating legal awareness among the people.
Friends, our judicial system is dynamic and an institution which is vibrant with life. As the ultimate protector of human rights and the final resort for dispensation of justice, the citizens of India look up to this judicial institution with awe and eternal hope. This casts a very heavy responsibility on the entire judicial system to live up to the expectations reposed in it and to maintain the sacred aura attached to it unsullied. Qualities of honesty and integrity are synonymous with each member of the judicial system as reflected in the life of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. The life of Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer and his contribution to the society in the form his judgement, articles and books are the valuable guiding principle for the students of Law and Justice to follow and emulate him as a role model. In this context, I would like to share with you “Transforming judiciary into a noble system”.
Now I would like to share with you certain thoughts based on my experience about the linkages of many disciplines which have to work in symphony on development and growth of any nation.
Interconnected societal system
I have studied the total development process of the nation. As you are aware, there are several interfaces in the total system. They are:
a. Political Leaders
b. Law makers – MPs and MLAs
c. Citizens
d. Administration (Public & Private)
e. Police
f. Scientist & Technologist
g. Lawyers and Law School
h. Judges – Supreme Court, High court, District courts
i. Media
Every interface has to work with a common vision of the development mandate for the country. It has to be transparent and pure; then only an integrated solution with a development focus will emanate. Many of the real life problems are complex, but the common goal of national development can provide objectivity and appropriate timely solution. I would like to explain how every system has to function for a common purpose with integrity.
a. Political leaders
Political leaders should set an example for the civil society with a vision for the nation and engaging in development politics. There is a need for the political leaders to respect the law and ensure that the processes of power are not used to circumvent the law of the land.
b. Law makers
There is a need to simplify the Law, discard irrelevant and old Acts with a certain periodicity. Make the system in such a way the dispensation of justice takes place fast and fair. Our education system should promote legal literacy through formal and informal mechanisms particularly for the rural community.
c. Citizens
Citizen should have respect for others’ rights and also attempt to use the legal system for good purposes and not for petty, selfish ends or for power politics. The feed back from the citizens is most valuable and in the democratic system, their vigilance in selecting the right type of representatives will be a positive index for growth.
d. Administration
The Administration should be responsive, proactive and also innovative to keep pace with contemporary changes and expectations. Administrator should use technology like e-governance to give fast decisions in all respects.
e. Police
Police system should function in a way that good citizens will have faith and nothing to be afraid of. They should not succumb to any external pressures in delivery of justice. They should protect honest officials in discharging the duties. Police personnel should be facilitated with perks and remuneration consistent with their performance expectations.
f. Scientist and Technologist
Scientist and technologist have to be partners with the legal community and evolve legal frameworks for introduction of new technology in the system, so that the judiciary is able to administer justice with speed using the benefits of technology and also ensure that the technologies are used keeping the ethical values and principles in mind. In emerging technologies the legal frame work must be developed without time lag while the technology itself is developing.
g. Lawyers
Legal profession is not a mere business but it has the responsibility to unfold truth. Therefore they should abide by the principles of professional ethics. Law school should engender such values at the beginning and senior Lawyers should become role models for the youth.
h. Judges – Supreme Court, High Courts, District courts
It is essential to make truth prevail irrespective of the level of the stature of the affected parties. Speed of delivery of justice is crucial for the citizens. Courts have a tendency to give the benefit of doubt to the accused purely due to technical reasons of law. While deterrent laws and role model behaviour at all levels and moral education at young age can reduce tendencies for crime, including social, the timely delivery of justice will remove the cynicism of public and increase the time for development.
i. Media
Media should remain vigilant and pro-active. However, they should apply adequate caution not to pre-judge issues or sacrifice truth for sensation.
Governance
We see in our country that there is no dearth of talent; there are well conceived programmes; there are reasonable allotments of money. Still the benefits accruing to the public are not consistent. I feel that a synchronized working of all the nine constituents with national development and human welfare as focus will lead to successful accomplishment of missions and lead to a happy society. With the challenges of development mounting, with the citizens willing to contribute for development, with the potential of technology for acceleration of development, the legal system has to enable the dynamics of law-technology-society for public-private- citizen partnership with good, result oriented governance. Let me now talk about the importance of timely justice delivery.
Importance of speedy justice
In a developing economy, for that matter in any modern economy, there is an urgent need to implement nationally relevant and important projects in a time bound manner. While the Courts are the guardians to protect the projects from the onslaught of from and machinations of unscrupulous individuals or groups, the Courts also have a responsibility to ensure that honest implementations are not impeded by unsustainable or motivated litigations or honest persons vilified through public glare based on such filings. This dual role of the judiciary places enormous responsibility on the shoulders of the Courts and the nation’s development is equally dependent on the dynamism and the innovativeness of the judicial system. Hence, there is an urgent need to ensure that no justice is delayed and the situation existing today is remedied soon. Though I have cited an example from the projects of the national initiative’s point of view, this is equally valid even for the litigations that concerns individual citizens and organisations as well. Human rights of many persons are being violated through charges made by certain groups and cases filed which take many years to come to final decision. Years lost don’t come back to individuals or their families.
Hence, it is essential to adopt the technology tools for the delivery of speedy justice, let us explore the possibility of potential of e-judiciary.
Potential of e-Judiciary
Computerization of the High Courts and the District Courts is essential for the development of e-judiciary system. From the time the case is filed till it is disposed off with judgment, the entire processing must take place electronically. This will enable easy search, retrieval, grouping, information processing, judicial record processing and disposal of the cases in a transparent manner and enable quicker disposal of cases. At any time the complainant should be able to find out, what the stage is? Which Court? Which date? and which subject will be dealt with by the Court during a particular hearing, enabling the parties to be fully prepared for the case. Apart from bringing in total transparency in the case, the judges can also see how the case has progressed, how many adjournments have been sought, whether the grounds are trivial or serious and many such information which will make the delivery of justice impartial. Supreme Court should transform the present mission into “e-judiciary” mission. In certain High Courts, e-Court system has started functioning. The proposed action for connecting all the fifteen thousand courts in the country from the District Court to the Supreme Court through a Wide Area Network will further enhance the efficiency of the judicial system. The e-Judiciary initiative within the overall justice delivery system should help in transforming the Court service into a better focused system in meeting the needs of the citizens. e-Judiciary will have to be in a position to provide information in real time on the rights and responsibilities of the citizens.
e-Courts leading to e-Judiciary – A Vision
It is my experience that computerization of a large organization or mission is successful only if the process themselves are re-engineered for realizing the full benefits of automation. In a connected world, e-Courts should lead to e-judiciary by judiciously interconnecting various organs of the society, government, institutions and citizens. The objective of e-Judiciary should be to ensure the seamless flow of information across the various units of government, judiciary, institutions, and citizens crossing the inter-departmental barriers leading to:
◦ Real time availability of authentic information.
◦ Linkages established between all transactions.
◦ Improvement in overall productivity.
◦ Reduction in multiple levels of appeal.
e-Judiciary thus ensures the overall improvement in efficiency of the judicial system. With the progressive improvement that I am seeing in the Judicial System in our country, you will certainly achieve the vision of transforming the present system into e-Judiciary system. In this context, let me now explain, my visualization of a typical scenario in the environment of e-judiciary.
Typical scenario: e-Judiciary – a Vision:
My visualization of a typical scenario is where a citizen files a case for a civil dispute of a piece of land in the e-Court using his or her National ID CARD and he gets a justice within two weeks of time.
Let me unfold the scenario. A litigant comes with his national ID to the e-Court Service Centre in a District Court with all the documentary evidence which he possesses. e-Court Service Centre helps electronically to identify a civil lawyer to present his case. The lawyer files the case with a prescribed format in the e-Court. Once the case is filed, the e-Court web service agent crawls across the state and central e-governance grid and collects the relevant land records registry and gets the encumbrance certificate details of the litigants and the defendants. If necessary, it also collects the credit history of the parties from the banking grid, criminal record if any from the police grid, litigation records if any from the other courts, property tax and service tax payment data for the particular disputed land from the State e-governance grid, legal heir verification from the Registrar of Deeds and classification and conversion details of the particular land from the district e-governance grid. The judicial officer now has the documentary evidence submitted by the litigant and defendant and the certified and authentic documentary evidence collected from various government units which have relevance to this case on the fly in front of him. This will enable the judicial officer to apply his or her mind objectively with optimal examination and cross-examination of the witnesses leading to taking a fast decision in the particular case.
Linkage with NeGEP (National e-Governance Programme): This entire process happening in the network speed reduces the time gap in judgement. Affected party can go online for appeal with the judgement giving reasons and further documentary evidence to the higher court electronically if required. Higher courts get the entire data electronically and they can apply their legal provisions to entertain the case based on its merit and give their verdict without loss of time. The entire e-governance framework should facilitate the case to flow digitally in a secure environment with digital signature across the various stages within the court and across the courts. The data collection and verification with different respondents cutting across various institutions and individuals takes place in a seamless interoperable manner through the e-governance grid data collection mechanism. This data is presented in the form of text, audio, video right from the FIR, interrogation, enquiry, arguments and judgements. The case object is flowing digitally from District Courts to High Courts and High Courts to Supreme Court in a seamless fashion. The other horizontal and vertical e-governance grids such as police grid, banking gird, institutional grids, state grid and central government grid will assist the e-judiciary electronically and facilitate the decision making process in a transparent manner. Basically, in an e-judiciary environment, a case object is traveling into various stages of judicial process and creates Meta data in each stage of the judicial process, thereby creating a foot print of data about the case. An ICT legal expert system assists the advocates and the judges with the legal provisions, previous case history, previous judgement details in various courts thereby helping them to arrive at a decision based on the spirit of the legal provisions. Hence a fully operational e-Governance GRID is vital for the success of E-Judiciary.
Information flow for innovation: E-judiciary system should also help the judicial officers to categorize various cases and group them into number of categories so that innovative mechanisms can be found to reduce the pendency of cases in categories which have common law point. For example, in more than 50% of the pending cases Central or State Government is the respondent. These cases have arisen due to certain anomalies in the rules, regulations, interpretation and its implementation. E-judiciary system should be able to classify all the cases which are filed against the government into specific categories which can be collectively examined by the judiciary. This type of examination will enable the judiciary to provide advice to the Government for incorporating suitable modifications of policies and procedures in meeting the ends of natural justice for every citizen of the nation.
Necessity of code of conduct for citizens
At the State level, greater and more effective coordinated decision-making ability is the most basic requirement. At the individual level, greater respect for traditional values and sense of social responsibility like love and respect for one’s family and teachers, service to the neighborhood and community; tolerance for authority are now absolutely essential. Above all, we as people, individuals and especially institutions, require increased ability to cooperate with one another, improving thereby our work and personal relationships. While we have the basic structure in the form of law, police cadres, intelligence agencies and the judicial system, we need to reinforce them with required updates with a code of conduct. Every citizen, every group, every religion and every political and executive system should allow the law to function without interference.
Conclusion
It is of utmost importance to remember that fairness, nobility and righteousness on the part of dispensers of justice constitute the hallmark of any sound judicial system. Hence for the alternative dispute redressal mechanism to successfully thrive in its quest for delivery of amicable, thrifty and speedy justice it ought to be ensured that those who don the robes of mediators, conciliators, negotiators and arbitrators set an example for the posterity by efficiently disposing off litigation without compromising on the time and quality of justice. At the same time, interference by the formal legal system in disputes redressed through alternative system should remain minimal and on well defined grounds to lend credibility to the alternative system.
Our judiciary has a great tradition. It has given wholesome meaning and healthy content to our democracy. We have every reason to be proud of our system and I have no doubt that as days go by, our judicial system will go from strength to strength justifying the citizens’ faith in it and their hopes and aspirations for speedy dispensation of justice.
Certainly the integrity, value system set by the leaders like Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer will become the guiding light for the students of the legal and law institutions, particularly the students from National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi. Once again I congratulate Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer for the Doctorate award that he received today for his unique contribution. May God bless you.