This is the text of a letter written to the Chief Justice of Kerala on 18 Nov

2004. It could as well have been addressed to the Chief Justice of India and all
other constitutional authorities as well. But the reason for addressing it to the
CJ of Kerala was that this letter was followed up with a satyagraha in front of
the High Court of Kerala on 27 Jan 2005, earlier scheduled for 31 Dec 2004 and 01
Jan 2005 but it had to be postponed because of the Tsunami that hit the Kerala
shores on the eve of Christmas 2004. The satyagraha lasted only for less than 15
minutes by which time the Assistant Commissioner of Police swooped down with his
posse of policemen and arrested me. I was told that I was being charged with
‘creating obstruction in a public place’ when the only thing I had done was to put
up two banners along the wall of the High Court both having the same text: ‘Who
will judge the judges?’- one in Malayalam and the other in English! And this in a
land where there is a bandh, now renamed hartal, that brings life to a standstill
at the drop of hat! Copies of the letter have however been sent to all the
constitutional authorities, viz, the President, the PM, CJI etc-Veteran Major P M
Ravindran.

REFORMING OUR JUSTICE DELIVERY SYSTEM

This letter is being addressed to you in your capacity as the competent authority
responsible for maintaining the health of this system. I am of course one who is
affected very very badly by its present very very poor health. My aim here is to
highlight certain maliciousness manifest in the system and suggest some surgical
measures needed to set them right.

Contempt of Court Act – anathema to the very concept of democracy.

I quote the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC):
‘the crucial failure is the innate resistance in governments and governmental
processes to the fundamental article of democracy, viz. that all power and all
authority flows from the people and that all public institutions are meant solely
to serve the public interest. The assurance of the dignity of the individual
enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution has remained unredeemed; From this
fundamental breach of the constitutional faith flow almost all our present ills.
The first and the foremost need is to place the citizens of this country at
center-stage and demonstrate this prioritization in all manifestation of
governance'.

In this context, of the three -the law-making, law-executing and law-interpreting-

organs of the constitution, the law-making is the best, the executive, the next
best and the law-interpreting, the worst. The reasons are obvious. It is only the
law-making politician who actually reaches out to the people, at least on the eve
of elections, and demonstrates his accountability to them. Even the
administration, the only one that can fail to deliver for want of resources, is
responsive to the extent that a lot of things get done in a predictable manner and
within time frames that are specified. To clarify this issue of resources,
consider the case of a town having 10 road junctions needing to deploy traffic
police. In this case, unless 10 traffic policemen are available at a time the
traffic in the town as a whole can be adversely affected. Or, consider the case of
regulating a crowd. Depending on the strength of the crowd, the strength of the
police force also has to be comparable to ensure that nothing untoward happens.
Anything less could result in turmoil.

Coming to the judiciary, leave alone the concept of accountability it is difficult

to identify even any sense of responsibility. I quote the NCRWC: 'Judicial system
has not been able to meet even the modest expectations of the society. Its delays
and costs are frustrating, its processes slow and uncertain. People are pushed to
seek recourse to extra-legal methods for relief. Trial system both on the civil
and criminal side has utterly broken down.' Also, 'Thus we have arrived at a
situation in the judicial administration where courts are deemed to exist for
judges and lawyers and not for the public seeking justice'.

Still, in spite of all these, it is only the Judiciary that has been given
unmerited and unwarranted shelter under a perverse Contempt of Court Act. While
repealing this Act may be in the domain of the law-maker, there are any number of
cases where courts have held legislations, in whole and in parts, invalid. The
Contempt of Courts Act is one which can and should be abrogated by the judiciary
itself in toto.

What we need in this democratic country is a Contempt of Citizen (Prevention of)

Act and we need it urgently too. Given the activist role the judiciary has taken
on itself, I suggest that the legislators be directed to bring in such a
legislation without further delay.

Judicial accountability and the National Judicial Commission. A former CJI is on

record that 20% judges are corrupt. Another CJI moaned that there is pressure on
the Hawala Bench. Yet another one expressed helplessness in tackling an instance
of mass leave by high court judges. Some CJsI, after demitting office, have even
gone abroad and advised foreign governments to avoid taking issues to Indian
courts since the delays are preposterous. One CJI, shortly after retiring, came to
Kerala and passed some comments which, had it been made by anybody else, would
have landed him/her behind bars for contempt of court. Then of course there are
the Mysore, Rajasthan and Delhi cases reportedly involving the judges of the high
courts there. Suffice to say that the need for a National Judicial Commission to
try judges has been amply established. When even the President of India has asked
his office to be brought under the purview of the Lok Ayukt, it is disconcerting
that the judiciary has not responded positively to this need of ensuring
transparency in its functions and integrity of conduct of its members.

Judicial Accessibility. While the law-makers have reportedly favoured the

establishment of regional benches of the apex court and additional benches of the
high courts in order to mitigate the problems of justice-seekers to whatever
extent such a measure would help, the judiciary does not seem to be enthusiastic
about it and is even denying the need for such a measure. In the case of Kerala,
though the Government of Kerala is in favour of establishing the bench at
Thiruvanantha-puram, the judiciary needs to take cognizance of the fact that when
litigants from Thiruvanantha-puram can come to Ernakulam, attend the court
proceedings and return to their homes the same day such facilities do not exist
even for litigants from Kozhikode which is located centrally in the Malabar
region. Thus ground realities dictate that a bench of the High Court needs to the
established at the earliest at Kozhikode. Similarly, regional benches of the apex
court also need to be established in such a manner that litigants can travel
overnight by train, attend the court and return the next night.

The Judicial process.

Ms Arundhathi Roy was modest in declaring that in our courts ‘the process is worse
than the judgement’. (Photostat copy of a letter received from a group of
aggrieved consumers along with a translation of the text is attached for your
perusal. The identities have been masked because it is not considered relevant.)
Some key aspects of this process, their implications and suggested remedies are
given in the following paragraphs.

Listing of cases. This is one area that needs to be spruced up on a war footing.
One is shocked by the number of cases listed before each judge everyday when only
a meagre fraction of this number is actually heard and decided on. The percentage
of cases adjourned, for whatever reasons, would easily be of the order of 80 to
90%., implying that if 100 cases are listed 160 to 180 litigants, excluding
witnesses, are bound to return after having wasted their resources-time, money and
energy- for no fault of theirs. This is one of the most easily solved problems
because it would not be difficult to reduce the number of cases listed for a day
depending on the competence of the judge and catering for a margin for lapses on
the part of the litigants themselves. I would suggest that if a judge can hear
only 10 cases then not more than 15 cases should be listed.

Calling the cases listed for the day in a chronological order will also help the
litigants to track their turn without the need to remain tensely attentive
throughout inside the court hall.

Personal appearance of litigants/representatives. This is another area that can be

cleaned up with a bit of diligence on the part of judicial authorities. Except in
criminal cases involving large number of witnesses and especially in cases
involving only documentary evidence, the need for the affected parties to appear
before the court should not arise more than once or in the worst case twice. The
Consumer Protection Act (CPA) when enacted in 1986 was a more effective piece of
legislation than it is now after two amendments. The reason is simple. When 5
parties – the petitioner, opposite party/parties, the judge(s), the advocates for
the opposing parties- are involved in a case absence/unpreparedness of any one
party affects the progress of the case adversely. This problem can be overcome
ONLY by reducing the statements of the parties to writing and the judges studying
them independently, noting observations and seeking clarifications in writing. The
affected parties may be summoned only once before deciding the judgement and may
be once more when passing the orders.

Involvement of advocates. It is shockingly true that in our courts advocates for

the opposing parties in any case can find rules/ precedences to support their
obviously opposing stands. Ultimately, it would appear to an onlooker, that the
judge can as well deliver his order by tossing a coin! Further, it is not
practically possible for the litigants to hire the services of equally competent
advocates. Thus the richer person tends to get undue advantage. This is quite
evident even in ‘Consumer Courts’ where the complainant is often a simple, law-
biding citizen of modest means and the opposite parties are
establishments/organizations with much greater resources at their disposal. When
the second amendment to the CPA was being contemplated there was a suggestion that
opposite parties should be allowed to engage advocates only if the complainant has
engaged the services of an advocate. Unfortunately it did not materialize. The
reasons are anybody’s guess. But there was certainly an opposition to it from the
Bars. However the logic holds good even today and it applies to regular courts as
much as to ‘consumer courts’.

Citizens’charter and working hours. As with government offices delivering various

services of the government, the courts also need to publish Citizens’ charters
giving out the details of the qualitative and quantitative norms and cost for
their services. This will include displaying the working hours of the courts,
approximate number of hearings, time frame for completion of a case based on the
clause on which a charge has been framed and the authority who may be approached
in case there is any default in following the Charter.

Grading of advocates and establishing norms for fees. To mitigate the injustice in
economically weaker litigants not getting the services of competent advocates,
there is a need to grade every advocate by his/her specialization, success rate
etc and fix the fees accordingly. Then it should be mandated that the economically
better off litigant can only hire the services of an advocate who is in the same
category as the advocate hired by the economically weaker litigant. Since these
may fall within the purview of procedures it is hoped that the courts have the
jurisdiction to accept and implement them.

Irrationality and unfairness of decisions. There are any number of cases where the
decisions are patently devoid of reason, leave alone fairness. There is an order
of the Kerala High Court in a particular case making Section 56 of the CPC
applicable while passing orders under Section 27 of the Consumer Protection Act.
This in effect actually excluded women as a whole from the punitive provisions of
a period legislation! Or, in other words, it literally gave women a license to
cheat and get away with it! And there are similar orders of the apex court which
one finds difficult to believe

have actually been passed by supposedly learned judges. For example, 'courts have
jurisdiction to decide right or to decide wrong and even though they decide wrong,
the decrees rendered by them cannot be treated as nullities' and 'there can be no
interference in revision merely because the decision is erroneous in law or in
fact where there is no error pertaining to jurisdiction'. I can quote similar
instances in cases which I have personally pursued in consumer disputes redressal
fora / commissions and even the regular courts.

Conclusion. It would be naïve on my part to presume that our justice delivery

system will improve with writing a letter of this nature. It would be my effort to
pursue this with a satyagraha in front of the High Court of Kerala at Ernakulam on
31 Dec 2004 and 01 Jan 2005. I shall be approaching all civic society groups that
I know of or heard of, for whatever support they can offer. I am sure that the
language of this letter is modest enough to convey the grim facts that needed to
be conveyed. It is just in keeping with the dignity of a law-abiding citizen who
according to our Constitution holds the highest office of the land. I quote the
NCRWC : 'The highest office in our democracy is the office of citizen; this is not
only a platitude, it must translate into reality'.

I shall be grateful if the contents of this letter is disseminated amoung your

companion judges.

Looking forward to a favourable response.

Regards and best wishes.

(P M Ravindran)
Major (Retired)

E mail: majorravi@gmail.com