Supreme Court: How to get strong judiciary

New Delhi: “No government wants a strong judiciary,” said the Supreme Court on Friday after it held that meagre budgetary allocations by the Centre and states impeded setting up additional courts and infrastructure needed to speed up justice delivery system. It said, “Budgetary allocation to judiciary is less than 1% by the governments. This shows their commitment towards the judiciary.” The anguished remark from a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly came when it was told that in the adjournmentmarred Amar Singh phone tapping case trial only one witness had been examined in the last four years. “This case should have been over in three months. Adjournments have become a cancer to the institutions,” said the bench, while discussing with Solicitor General the delay in justice dispensation and the urgent need for increasing the number of courts and infrastructure. “The system has already become sick. What can be the expectation of the common man for speedy justice? Even in Supreme Court, a special leave petition takes eight years to reach final hearing,” the bench said. “We all give sermons. We go to National Judicial Academy and give lectures to judicial officers asking them to speed up disposal of cases. But where is the infrastructure. They are already under heavy burden. There are only lectures, committees and commissions, but no solutions,” it said. In the 10th Five-Year Plan (2002-07), the allocation for judiciary was Rs 700 crore, 0.07% of the total outlay. Most states provide for less than 1% of the budgetary allocations towards judiciary and have not implemented the SC-approved salary hike for judicial officers. Seven years ago, then Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti had said, “The governments are under an obligation to provide an adequate machinery for justice, to appoint more judges and to give them better emoluments and facilities.” Afzal Guru wants to stay in jail nearer home New Delhi: Five-and-a-half years after he was sentenced to death for the terrorist attack on Parliament, Mohammad Afzal Guru on Friday requested the Supreme Court to ask the Centre to shift him from Tihar Jail in Delhi to one nearer to his home in Srinagar. Afzal had filed a petition to shift him from Tihar Jail to a jail in J&K citing his family members’ inability to meet him at Delhi because of poor financial conditions. He was awarded capital punishment which was upheld by the Supreme Court on August 4, 2005. He had filed a mercy petition on January 4, 2006, with the President. TNN