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Govt should not overload Supreme Court with cases, says Attorney General
The government should not “overload” the Supreme Court with “endless statutory appeals”, said Attorney General R Venkatramani on Saturday during the 73rd Constitution Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court
The government should not “overload” the Supreme Court with “endless statutory appeals”, said Attorney General R Venkatramani on Saturday during the 73rd Constitution Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court.
The top law officer, while raising some issues of concern in the legal system, said: “It is important that the government stops overloading the (Supreme) Court with endless statutory appeals alongside a seamless and huge flow of cases from high courts.”
He opposed the tendency of bringing every appeal against a high court order to the top court as he said: “The conversion of Supreme Court into a small causes court must stop.”
The debate on whether a National Court of Appeals should be set up to offload the Supreme Court of a huge bulk of appeals filed by the government against high court orders is pending consideration with a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. The AG said: “Whether we keep engaging our thoughts on National Court of Appeal or not, we need to strengthen our high courts and also decongest them which alone can stem the flow of work in the Supreme Court.”
This was possible, Venkatramani said, if the government charts the road map to adopt a litigation policy. “For long, governments have been talking about litigation policy. There is no reason why this policy cannot emerge. Every department must have a resolution wing with competent, legal equipment to resolve fact-based issues. Every matter need not be a legal dispute. Only complex, legal issues which otherwise cannot be settled must go for institutional resolution,” AG said.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and Union law minister Kiren Rijiju present at the event, the AG spelt out his vision to reform the administration of justice mechanism by proposing socio-economic entitlement commissions to help resolve social and economic needs of deprived sections of society to relieve courts of added burden.
He said: “Need to come to courts to settle matters of salary, or pay or pension or retiral benefits must cease.”
He proposed that a legal service provision is provided in every panchayat and is open to the idea of having a “justice provision tax” on the rich and the able.
He said much needs to be done in the field of legal reforms by reviewing property dispute laws to be catered by settlement commissions and family courts to become family comfort institutions. To work on these aspects, he emphasised the need to have a Law Commission of India on a permanent basis that could work on reforms oriented towards legal profession, courts, and research on emerging topics of law.
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