Whatever measures were taken to attract Foreign Direct Investment in retail are not sufficient to make India a number one destination for investment. The country needs to do a lot more.
This is what said senior Supreme Court advocate KTS Tulsi while giving a lecture on Foreign Direct Investment and Criminal Justice System in India at the 7th national conference on Interdependence, Integration and Co-creation 2012 organised by the Jaipuria Institute of Management on Saturday.
“Uncertain legal system, deficiencies in legislative process, arbitrary and contradictory interpretation of laws may prove to be a deterrent to attracting foreign investments,” he said and added, “Judicial system in India suffers from many malaises, like archaic pleading system, adversarial system, non- transparency in appointment of judges. But the biggest bottleneck is the delay in disposal of cases.”
According to Tulsi, in India, civil suits take over two decades to finish and execution of decree itself takes 5-10 years.
“Criminal trial goes on even after the accused and the victim are dead. The cancer of delay has crippled the judicial system,” he said and added, “Criminal justice system is largely affected and virtually paralysed. This paralysis of criminal courts and police station gives free hand to criminals and makes crime ‘low risk-high-profit’ business as the law has ceased to be a deterrent.”
{{/usCountry}}“Criminal trial goes on even after the accused and the victim are dead. The cancer of delay has crippled the judicial system,” he said and added, “Criminal justice system is largely affected and virtually paralysed. This paralysis of criminal courts and police station gives free hand to criminals and makes crime ‘low risk-high-profit’ business as the law has ceased to be a deterrent.”
{{/usCountry}}The delay in judicial system can be countered with effective use of technology, strengthening of infrastructure and giving facilities and amenities to judges, he said.
About the number of judges, he said Justice Malimath Committee Report says that problem is the number of judges is not in proportion to the population. “India’s ratio is 10.5 judges per million and World Ratio is 50 judges per million.”
However, according to Tulsi the critical test is not judgepopulation ratio but judgedocket ratio. Docket refers to the list of cases to be tried that gives accurate representation of workload of judge.
This can be achieved by effective court management, modernization of police stations, modernization of criminal courts, criminal justice board, use of science, technology, he suggestd.
Syed Sibtey Razi, former governor of Jharkhand and Assam rued that though India had a large number of universities, there weren’t any that could match the international standards.
JD Singh, director general, JIM, SR Musanna, director, JIM, Kavita Pathak, associate professor, JIM also shared their views.
They also released a souvenir on the occasion.