Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Apr 5: “The people have started losing faith in the credibility of the judicial system because of lack of accountability on their part. The executive and the legislature have failed the people. As compared to Supreme Court (SC), High Courts have fared better in delivering justice,” opined Karnataka High Court judge, Justice D V Shylendra Kumar. He was delivering the silver jubilee endowment lecture on the topic of ‘The Need of Judicial Accountability in an Era of Judicial Accountability,’ at a programme organized by the Centre for PG Students and SDM Law College here, on Sunday April 4.
To substantiate his claim on the role of the SC, he pinpointed the cases of Jabalpur administration vs. Shivakant Shukla relating to emergency, and TMA Pai Foundation vs. Karnataka State regarding charging of capitation fee for the students. He felt that with the increasing level in all offices including judiciary, the level of responsibility also should go up. He lamented that of late, the courts are compelled to discharge the duties of the legislature and the executive often, as these two pillars of democracy have failed to function effectively. He thought that the executive should shoulder 70% of the responsibility, legislature should take 20%, and that the judiciary’s share in discharging duties in an administration is only 10%.
“It is the duty of the executive to ensure that the laws passed by the legislature are in conformity with laid down rules. As both the executive and legislature have failed to stand up to their tasks, frequently the courts are facing the need to interfere to suggest modification of the laws,” he explained. He lamented that the Law Commission, which is expected to recommend to the government the need to formulate laws and ammend the existing ones in tune with the aspirations of the people, has failed to do this job properly.
This is a time of reforms in the judiciary as far as accountability is concerned. The judiciary will conform to this demand, if the people put up sustained demand on it, and if this leads to taking a logical decision, Justice Kumar analyzed. He felt that the Right to Information Act is an affective tool available to the people to stop misrule and maladministration and to bring transparency in the administration as well as judiciary. He regretted the blemishes the judiciary of the country has suffered because of cases like Justice Dinakaran, Justice Nirmal Yadav and Justice Saumitra Sen.
The absence of Mangalore University’s vice chancellor, T C Shivashankara Murthy, who was expected to preside over the programme, was conspicuous, and this apparently irked Justice Kumar. He expressed his resentment at this incident, by commenting that Murthy has gone into hiding, and that he was unable to decipher the reasons behind this act.
He hailed Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari, Dr D Veerendra Heggade, for running a model judicial system, which is free of lacunae, and where the outcome is always unquestionable. “Courts need to learn a lot from his kind of delivery of justice,” he added.
SDM Group of Educational Institutions vice president, Prof S Prabhakar, presided. SDM Law College principal, Dr B K Ravindra, was present. Mangalore Bar Association president, S P Chengappa, welcomed. Secretary, Asha Nayak, compered the programme. Udayanand proposed vote of thanks.
When lawyer, P P Hegde, presented a memento to Justice Kumar after garlanding him subsequent to delivering the welcome address, the latter asked Hegde to open the wrapper. After seeing that it was a book, he accepted it, commenting that he would not have accepted the memento, if it was anything other than a book that gives knowledge.