PM urges judiciary for speedy justice

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday urged the lawyers and judiciary to work together to provide speedy justice to the people.

Addressing the legal fraternity at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Bar Council of India, the Prime Minister also said the government was aware of its responsibility in working with the judiciary and other stakeholders to build a "strong and effective" justice delivery system.

"It is of critical importance that the bench and the bar work together in ensuring the rule of law in our country and in furthering our Constitutional objectives," Singh said. "Unless this happens, we cannot succeed substantially in providing speedy and affordable justice to millions of our countrymen, especially those who belong to poor and weaker sections of society."

Expressing concern over the huge pendency of cases, Singh said several challenges have to be overcome and many bottlenecks removed before the objective of ensuring complete rule of law is achieved. "An obvious area of concern is the large number of cases pending in courts especially in trial courts. I would urge the whole of the legal fraternity to pool their knowledge, wisdom and experience to find ways and means to tackle this problem," he said.

In his address, Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir, while expressing concern over the falling standards of the legal profession, said, "Look at the standards that we have set for ourselves. How far have we been able to maintain them? How far have we been able to maintain during fifty years these standards, these values? There are many reasons for the falling standards."

He also stressed the need for adopting the alternative dispute resolution mechanism, like lok adalats and mediation for settling disputes. "Today dockets of the court are quite difficult to manage. Maybe there are various reasons for it. One is rising population, then the number of cases are increasing. This is bound to happen," he said.

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