A
FATALITY OF A DREAM
(SOURISH
PRESENT)
–
DHILEEPAN PAKUTHARIVU
Dr. Ambedkar Govt. Law College, Chennai
“Where
justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and
where any one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to
oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass
Indian legal system is the most
admirable and very unique system which serving more than 2000 ethnic groups.
The important feature of our legal system is that it is based on the
adversarial system in which a judge would give a judgement based on the
arguments and evidence of the case.
The Indian constitution, which is the
supreme law of the land, provides the framework of the present legal system of
the country. It aims to achieve the Justice in all the three spheres namely
social, economic and political. But we are still trying to achieve this goal
from the date of enactment.
Recently, V.M. Kanade and M.S. Sonak JJ
of Bombay High Court was hearing a petition made by widow that she is unable to
give full fees of her son’s admission while the school is insisting for the
same. Justice Kanade stated that the school should consider the payment of fees
in instalments or he himself would pay the fees because the four year old child
should not be deprived of education.
This observation may be appreciable but
this is not a justice that the makers of our constitution dreamt for. There are
enough laws to regulate each and every problem that we faced today. However,
our system faces certain inherent problems like corruption, backlog of pending
cases, lack of transparency, hardships of the under trials.
According to United Nation’s Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) 21.9% people out of 1.2 billion of Indians lived below
poverty line. However those above poverty line are also living a fragile
economic life. Even though law ensures equality, in reality equality is a myth.
Rarely, poor’s got their justice by the courts of law. PIL and RTI are the boon
to the common people. But how far it was used by the poor? Is again rose a
question. In reality, that too was used by many people for their own benefits
and many were the victims of blackmail.
We can quote number of examples which
really resolves the problem of poor people. When compared with the percentage
of population and number of grievances filed the result would be comparably
low. 2,78,000 out of 3,94,000 prisoners (70%) in gaol were found to be under
trail prisoners. Under trials are not guilty till convicted. Majority of such
under trial prisoners are from the under privileged poor sections.
The rich can afford for an eminent and
most expensive lawyer. India has over a million of registered lawyers, but a
large number of them graduated with dubious degrees from indifferent law
schools. These poorly educated lawyers were mostly the lawyers of poor. Even a
layman can know how the judiciary is acting differently in ‘high profile cases’.
Most of the lawyers, judges and every other person who involved in the process
of administering justice would act according to the wish of the accused VIPs.
This sort of bias will only shorten by eradicating the above said inherent
problems from the judiciary.
The very spirit of Indian judiciary to
emancipate the subalterns to ensuring equality and social justice is now at
peril. In a common law system the judiciary should interact with the society and
it should be relevant for time being. However, in India, the judicial system
has no connection with the society. Even today, the law officers have not been
able to come closer to the field to meet the general public.
Therefore, there is an immediate need to
restructure the system to make it answerable to the needs of a democratic
society. Instead of making ridiculous rules, Hon’ble Courts of Higher Judicature's must pay attention to resolve the intricate things within the
judiciary to serve for the people and they should not act as a crown with frown
to the poor anymore.
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