A letter, written on 12/12/2016, to the then CJI, T S Thakur, on judicial reforms.

1. P M Ravindran
2 I I 8,' Aathira', Sivapuri, Kalpathy-67 8003
Tele : 049 1 - 257 60 42 E-mail : raviforj ustice@ gmail. com
F i I e : Pe rs/j u d-cj i-refo rm s-L2L2L6 L2 Dec20L6
Mr T S Thakur,
I understand that you will be demitting office on 3 Jan 20L7. You must already be in the
process of attending farewell functions where sycophants and those who have personally
benefiited during your career would be extolling your virtues that you must have begun
thinking that you must be one amoung the gods. I am writing to you to narrate some harsh
realities. t
Firstly, my experience tells me that between Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Mini$ter of
this country and Baba Saheb Ambedkar, touted as the Father of our Constitution, t,[ey
perpetrated the greatest fraud on we, the people, through what we rever as the
Constitution. Law makers without any prescribed qualities, qualifications or experience,
their men Fridays (popularly known as bureaucrats, who are required to help them in
decision making by collecting and collating data and maintaining records) without any
accountability and b ludiciary.which has the scope for the most whimsical decision making
being held not only without accountability and bey6nd criticism but also protected by a
totally illogical and weird armour called contempt of court, are the essentialfeatures of this
Constitution in a nut shell.
ln the 70 years afterthe colonisers left us, it has been amply proved that what we have
been having for a government, whether in the states or in the Center (and that includes the
judiciary, wouldn't it?) is anything but a government!The state of affairs would necessitate
acknowledging Winston Churchill as a prophet or an oracle!
Confused at identifying which is the worst organ of the Constitution I once set out to
analyse the malaise through first principles. And th.is is what I concluded:
Amoung the three orgons of our Constitution the low-mokers are controlled by the
people, bureaucrocy (yes, bureoucrocy, because without the octive support of the
bureoucracy no politicion can do any wrong!) and fin.olly the judiciory; the law-enforcers
ore also controlled by the low-mokers and the judiciary. AnQthen there qre the eors and
eyes of the people- the medio woiting to.sensotionalise every news involving the
misdemeanour of these outhorities. tnspite of such strict supervision and control oll thot
we con hear these days ore about politician-bureoucrot-underworld nexus even though
the fact remoins that nonb, worth the name, from this unholy nexus have ever been
punished by the holier-than-thou judiciary.
So now think how bod q system con be which is not only NOT subject to supervision but
olso kept beyond critical observotion. Wel,l isn't our judiciory iust that? And do I need to
recopitulote thot quip: power corrupts ond obsolute power corrupts obsolutely?
I wouldn't waste my time reproducing whatever I have been writing about the need for
judicial reforms for the last decade and a half. But some of these have been posted as blogs
and you may go through them if you are intersted. Of particular relevance would be:

2. ls the judiciary taking citizens for a ride? at h
hVDU&bloeld= 1043020674
Reforming our justice delivery system at
http: ^viforiustice. bloqspot.com al l .' form ing_ou r_iustice_deliverv-svstem. htm I
Who willjudge the judges? At h
iudge_s.html
Parliamentary standing committee on iudicial Reforms at
http://raviforiustice. blosspot.cor:rr /2011 ? /pa rlia menta rv_stan d ing_com m ittee-on. htm I
httl://ravifori ustice, b lzens-revt
lndian judiciary-who said what at
http://raviforiustic€i.bloespot.com n11lo5i ind ian-iud icia_rr-u/h.-r. id-whrt. ham I
Access to Justice-A Stake holder,s Repo(
http: 'viforiustice.blogspot.in f'012 ^ "cess-to-iustice-stake-holders-report.html
Democracy? East is East and West is West at http:1/www,articlesbase.com/politics_
The (Late) RTt Act at h
And there are more...
Now, coming specifically to your failures.
Through out your tenure as the cJl you have been heard harping on the judges to
population ratio as if that and that only isthe reason forthetotalfailure of the justice
delivery system presided over by the judiciary, which in turn hasseen presided over by you
during the last few years. This, no doubt, is a fraudulent claim. ln a country where more
than 50 pc of the population is worried only about the source of'their next meal, a basic
need as per Maslow's Law of Heirarchical Needs, the issue of justice comes only at the next
level of security needs or may 6e even at the next higher level of social needs. Leaving
hypothesis aside, let me quote some statistics I have saved of 1999 vintage (from a
PowerPoint Presentation attributed to Adv.KTS Tulsi):
Cases filed in one year in lndia
Million cases
: 13.6 Million (1.,36,68,073) cases; USA: 93.g1
Docket's per judge: lndia : 9g7 per Judge; USA: 3235 per Judge
while the second set of figures are self explanatory, the first has to be understood in the
context of the lndian population being 5 times the population of the US of A! ln other
words, for every one fierson filing a case in lndia there are 35 persons filing cases in the US
of Al
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Report of the NCRWC- a Citizens Review at
Justice Delivery System- FAes at

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Next, is the pretention of the judiciary that it is law unto itself, which has been reiterated
even by you, through two actions. One, when the apex court, during yourtenure, had held a
duly enacted law on the constitution of a National Judicial Appointments Commission void.
And, two, the harping on the Collegiun system for appointing judges.
Anybody who knows anything about the scheme of things provided in our Constitution will
have to agree that the law on NJAC had been enacted by the due process (quite an
elaborate and tedious one at that!) specified in the Constitution. Now, when one recognises
the fact that in the matter of citizens the judiciary can and does entertain only petitions
against violation of fundamental rights and similar logic applies to institutions also it is
shocking that this duly enacted law has been abrogated by the judiciary!
Coming to the Collegium system, again, anybody who is familiar with the facts will 6ave to
agree that the judiciary had usurped the powers from the executive taking advantale of the
weak'governments'led by P V Narasimha Rao and Atal BihariVajpayee. I see it alr6ost as a
revenge of the judiciary which had come under scathing criticism for creeping when
requirgd to bend during the dark days of the Emergency,
Coming to brass tacks, it needs to be placed on record that the biggest threat to rule of law
is the total, I repeattotal, failure of the judiciary, to reform itself, move with the times and
work in the interest of the citizens of this country. As one who has been studyingthe
functioning of the judiciary fairly closely,for the last decade and half, my view is that 90 pc
of the problems in the justice delivery system is due to the incompetence, indifference and
even arrogance of the managers of the judiciary.
To cut this communication short, here are a few things which the judiciary must do urgently
before it becomes irrelevant and throws the nation into a civil war like situation:
L. Ensure timely disposal of cases. (By the simple principle of justice delayed is justice
denied the judiciary is a total failure!)
L1,. For this the first requirement if of course having competent judges. This will
involve specialisation in subject specific laws. Though this is the'principle
underlying the constitution of various tribunals and commissions, in practice
their performance have been worse than regular courts.
1,.2. Even though the number of adjournments that can be given is specifed even
in the Consumer Protection Act, they are all violate$with impunity, Just to give
an example, in OP 282199 of Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Palakkad (OP
No 85/95 transferred from Malappuram), the opposite party had produced
interim stay order on28/L0/99 from teh Kerala High Court and the stay was
vacated only on 8/6/2005 but through out this period the case was listed 58
times and adjournedl lt was finally posted for orders on 6/7 /07 but was opened
for re-hearing suo moto on L5/21O8 and went on an adjournment spree from
3l3l0g to 3L1512O10. During this spree it was adjourned 17 times, including 5
times for want of members/President and 10 times for orders only! lt was
dismissed when an application was submitted under the RTI Act to find out the
status I
1.3. The next is limiting the number of cases listed for hearing to pragmatic levels
and ensuring that all the listed cases are heard and progressed to some
meaningful extent.ln lower courts more than a hundred cases are listed per day
when actual hearings are conducted only in less than dozen. Most of the few
working hours of the court is wasted in 'mustering'onlyl

4. 1.4. Cut out the holidays enjoyed by the judiciary exclusively. ln fact there is a
need for lower courts to work round the clock like police stations.
Ensure justice is done in every case. lt is important not only for justice to be done
but for justice to be seen to be done. Unfortunately what we find is the opposite.
Whether it is the final decision in Jayakrishnan master murder case, Soumya murder
case or armed forces officers rank pay case or Sahara case there are many questions
that create doubts about the credibility, reliabiltiy and intergrity of the judiciary.
Ensu re transpa rency in the processes an d fu nction ing of the co u rts. ln fact it is
obnoxious that some cases linger on for decades when some, of the same category,
are disposed off in a jiffy. List of cases under specific charges should be updated
atleast once in a quarter, progress evaluated and re-prioratised, if necessary.
Coming to transparency, it has to be noted that the claim of the then CJl, K G
Balakrishnan, that his office did not fall under the purview of the RTI Act had taken
the credibility, reliabiltiy and intergrity of the judiciary to new depths.
!
The so called independence of the judiciary is myth. Atleast one judge, whofauas
appointed as Lokayukta of Gujarat, refused to accept the appointment stat$g that it
would be impossible for him to perform his duties when the 'executive'was not co-
operative!We all know how it is a system of 'l scratch your back, you scratch my
back'that is the working model in our system of government. And that is why in
spite of scams worth lakhs of crores surfacing nobody worth the name has been
punished sd far ever! .
The totalfailure of the judiciary has led to a situation where everybody who is
anybody in government or criminals with money or muscle power tend to drive
every honest, hard working and simple citizen to the judiciary where they can simply
'rest'their cases and wait for the good Lord of Death to embrace them! The need
here is for even public servants to be treated as independent litigants and made to
suffer the court processes and punished for failure to successfully prosecute/defend
their cases. A system of rewards for'successfuly prosecuting/defending cases
involving public interest should be introduced to provide incentive for honest public
servants. (Please note that in the RTlAct, the penalty is imposed on the delinquent
public information officer as an individual and it has been clarifed by atleast some
high courts that if the penalised PIO has to go on appeal he has to do so at his own
expensel Unfortunatleythe apex court has not reiterated it and hence it has not
been implemented at the national level!)
The above list is by no means exhaustive. But it should b.e sufficient to make to think where
all you could have intervened and helped improve the situatioru And this, I must say, has
been the purpose of this communication to you.
Yours sincerely,
Sri T S Thakur
CJl. Supreme Court of lndia
New Delhi
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