CJI Gogoi shuns leniency, puts premium on court time, unveils procedural reforms

Last month, petitions on 3 headline-grabbing political controversies — Ayodhya land dispute, Rafale fighter deal and sending the CBI director on depart — were heard by benches headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi, who dealt every with scientific precision and passed intervening time orders inside of a few mins, striking an excessively top top class at the courtroom’s time.

A battery of famend attorneys appeared for the parties in every case, eager to position throughout their arguments. But the CJI-led bench ruthlessly squeezed out the verbosity, passed orders and proceeded to the following case.

CJI Gogoi’s means contrasts with that of his predecessor, who got bogged down by unsavoury occasions early in his tenure as CJI, became cautious of antagonising attorneys and allowed them to advance full-length arguments even all over preliminary hearings on appeals and PILs.

The ‘no leniency’ signal emerging from the CJI’s court docket is ominous for attorneys. Prepare neatly, be crisp and state your very best argument as soon as possible seems to be the new mantra, reminding one in every of former American president Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson used to be once congratulated for an indicator, pithy speech and requested concerning the time he took to prepare them. He had said, “It is dependent. If I'm to speak for 10 mins, I need a week for its preparation; if 15 mins, 3 days; if part an hour, two days; if an hour, I'm in a position now.”

Most attorneys who used to be in a position to argue a case at quick notice might now need to labour a lot more over the case and cull out the most efficient issues to be put throughout to the CJI-led bench within the shortest possible time. Then and only then could they possibly power house their argument.

Last week, the CJI conservatively opened a window to his idea process whilst declaring that “judiciary is in dire need of drastic reforms”. From the little he printed, it appeared that he has measured his time as the head of the judiciary, which is at very best 375 more days, and would focal point on procedural reforms to unclog the three-tier justice delivery gadget, careworn by a load of 3 crore pending cases.

First and principal, he appears severe in filling 5,000 posts of judicial officers mendacity vacant in trial courts, that have a sanctioned energy of a bit over 22,0000 posts. He has warned top courts and state governments, through judicial orders, to fill the posts in a time-bound method and supply every judicial officer with required infrastructure.

Long pending cases, a decision on which by the SC will help HCs do away with a large number of pending cases, are being given precedence. The CJI has set up a ‘think tank’, comprising pros, to cull out the good judgment hired by benches in achieving selections in important, yet usually voluminous, judgments for movement a few of the masses to make them aware of how judges draw conclusions in landmark cases.

But, essentially the most impressive procedural reform, printed by the CJI, is to make to be had copies of judgements to litigants of their mother tongues if the verdicts written in English were intelligible to them. When this idea emerges out of drawing forums, where it is at the present, it will turn out the most efficient connect between perfect judicial institution and the hundreds.

The different impressive persona of the CJI Gogoi’s idea process to bring in procedural reforms is his belief that there will have to be some continuity within the thread of judicial administration that emerges from the SC and percolates right down to lowest judiciary. He said he is devising the find out how to boost up the tired justice delivery gadget in active consultation along with his two successors - Justices S A Bobde and N V Ramana.

But gender equality in selection of judges to the SC and top courts is one side on which he has no longer throw any light on. With the appointment of 4 new judges to the SC on Friday, the overall selection of judges within the SC until date since January 26, 1950, rose to 237, of which 28 are serving. Of those, 3 are ladies and five more have retired. That takes the overall number to eight. This method simply three.4% of the overall selection of SC judges until date have been ladies.

India got its first woman SC pass judgement on in Fathima Beevi (1989-1992), who used to be followed by Sujata V Manohar (1994-1999), Ruma Pal (2000-2006), Gyan Sudha Mishra (2010-2014), Ranjana P Desai (2011-2014), and three sitting SC judges R Banumathi (2014-present), Indu Malhotra (2018-present) and Indira Banerjee (2018-present).


In this, there's similarity between the Indian SC and the USA Supreme Court, which in its 228 years of life with a maximum energy of nine has produced 113 judges. Only 4 were ladies, or just three.5% of the overall number. The first woman pass judgement on used to be Sandra Day O’Connor (1981-2006), followed by Ruth Badr Ginsburg (1993-present), Sonia Sotomayor (2009-present) and Elena Kagan (2010-present).


Like in India, there are very few in the USA who put their cash on a lady legal professional in relation to a prison trial involving toughies, who wish to be cross-examined, or trust them to argue matters involving constitutional issues. Four years ago, whilst speaking at Georgetown University, Justice Ginsburg had epitomised her gender equality stance when requested when she would think there have been enough ladies judges in the USA SC.


“My answer is when there are nine (she supposed all nine US SC judges),” she said. When eyebrows were raised, her response used to be similarly impressive, “There have been nine males, and no one questioned that.”


CJI Gogoi would possibly not consider having an SC with all 31 judges being ladies, but indubitably, their numbers within the SC and HCs need a boost.
CJI Gogoi shuns leniency, puts premium on court time, unveils procedural reforms CJI Gogoi shuns leniency, puts premium on court time, unveils procedural reforms Reviewed by Kailash on November 05, 2018 Rating: 5
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