Meet on Judicial Reform

The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reform (CJAR) organised a lively Seminar on June 20, 2007 in Hyderabad. According to its organizers, this Seminar was part of a country wide movement to expose the anti people orientation of the judiciary and propose measures to reform and renew the judiciary so that it could serve the needs of the toiling people. Such an All India campaign had in fact been launched at a Convention held in Delhi in March this year.

The Hyderabad meeting was attended by activists and lawyers working in defence of the rights of the people, who brought forth from their own experience, the need for complete overhaul of the judiciary as part of the overhaul of the system as a whole. The Seminar was inaugurated by Dr S K Rao, Director, Administrative Staff College of India. Dr Ramadevi, former Governor, HP and Karnataka and former member of the Law Commission was the Chief Guest. She inaugurated the website of the CJAR. Veteran lawyers Shri KG Kannabiran, Shri Prashant Bhushan, Dr Bhaskar Rao of the Centre for Media Studies and Prof Sridhar Madabhushi were amongst those who addressed the Seminar.

In his address, Shri Kannabiran, who is also the President of the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), pointed out that along with the other institutions of state, the judiciary was also in a severe crisis. Over the years, successive governments have been treating political problems as “law and order” problems to be dealt with through repression, instead of addressing them politically. Problems raised by the people of Jammu and Kashmir several decades ago have been dealt with in this manner, as has the demands raised by the people of the Gujjar community in Rajasthan last month. Repressive laws like Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) have been enacted and used freely over the last six decades. On the other hand, the governments at the centre and states did not deal justly and fairly either with the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984, the riots following the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992-93, or the Gujarat riots of 2002. Today land is being acquired from peasants all over the country and handed over to wealthy corporates who are making huge profits – a patently unfair use of the power of acquisition for “public good”.

Senior lawyer Shri Prashant Bhushan, one of the main initiators of the CJAR, pointed out that the vast majority of people of our country cannot access the judicial system on account of its complexity. Those who do, face delays of decades so that justice is effectively denied to them. The system of appointing judges especially to the higher courts is ad hoc, nepotistic, not transparent and definitely not above board. If judges are corrupt, the common man cannot even lodge an official complaint in a police station against them: let alone ensure that they are removed from office for their crimes! Thus judges are totally unaccountable to the people. Moreover, in recent years, they are coming out increasingly against the toiling people – decreeing demolition of slums and small shops, while allowing the big corporates to amass more wealth. The power to use the law of contempt of court has been used to stifle criticism of the courts and their functioning. Only a sustained public campaign can bring about the changes which the people need.

Dr Venkatesh Sunderam of the Lok Raj Sangathan pointed out in his presentation that the concept of rights itself has undergone change over the centuries – while English kings used the concept of “divine right of kings” to rule over their subjects, a modern definition of rights of individuals and collectives and their harmonisation is the need of the times. Laws and system of governance which the colonialists put in place were meant primarily to safeguard the colonial system of exploitation and plunder. Maintenance of “public order” by the judiciary was actually maintenance of orderly conditions for the exploitation. An important feature of the British system is that it treated the common Indian people as enemies, as guilty who must prove their innocence, while in words it declared otherwise. Its “impartiality” and “independence” from the government of the day was and remains a sham. Its purpose was to uphold the patently unjust colonial law and order.

Today, every sector of the economy – from agriculture to retail – is seen as source of profit by big corporations Indian and foreign. Laws are being made to open up more and more sectors to foreign capital. The judiciary is throwing its weight behind the increased loot and plunder of the country, its toilers and tillers, tribals and indigenous peoples. “Judicial activism" is thoroughly anti-people, arbitrary, unjust, and a method by which the political parties of the ruling class are able to carry out unpleasant attacks on the toiling people without revealing their hand.

Our people are fighting to wrest sovereignty into our own hands. All arms of the state must be under the control and supervision of the people, which means that the judiciary must be electable and subject to recall by the people. The struggle to renew the judiciary and bring it under the control and supervision of the people is an important part of the overall struggle for empowerment. One hundred and fifty years after the British crown formally divested us of our sovereignty, we must rededicate ourselves to the task of vesting it with the people.

A vigorous discussion session followed the presentations. Over twenty participants, both lawyers and peoples’ activists, made interventions at the meet. The meet ended by adopting a declaration and vowing to intensify the struggle for judicial reforms involving more and more sections of the toiling people.