Chief Justice advocates proper implementation of human rights

Advocating proper implementation of human rights rather than their mere declaration, Chief Justice of India Y K Sabharwal has said, "The concept of human rights has to be of universal application and there cannot be a different set of human rights for one part of the humanity and another for others".

He was delivering a lecture last night on 'Human rights and the international law', organised by Madhya Pradesh High Court in memory of senior lawyer late Rajendra Jain.

"Since humans are social animals, they establish for themselves organisations known as the society or politically speaking, the state. This naturally requires a balance between individual rights and public interest.

"Human rights thus came to be evolved as those of the natural rights which are fundamental to the very existence and growth of a human being", he said.

"The phenomenon of terrorism, which has become a major concern for free society, mainly after 9/11, essentially involves human rights violations. The instrumentality at the international level to deal with these violations has to be a body with requisite sanction and support of the world community", he said.

The International Court of Criminal Justice has so far not provided the answer. But then, these are subjects that would beg for answers perhaps for some more time to come, the CJI said.

Earlier, speaking at the function as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of the MP High Court, the CJI called upon lawyers to do some `soul searching' on the issue of pendecy of cases in the courts and urged them to encourage the culture of `no adjournment' for delivering speedy justice to the people.

Addressing the function, Union Law Minister Hansraj Bhardwaj informed that the centre was mulling over a proposal to set up `Gram Nyayalays' (village courts) to deal with the problem of pendency of cases and reduce the burden on subordinate courts.

He stressed the need for more bar-bench cooperation and interaction so that advocates would also get benefit of it, specially in terms of knowledge, in the interest of the people.

Bhardwaj also said that for the speedy disposal of cases, all the courts in the country will be computerised soon and added that the Indian judicial system was not only being praised, but is also being implemented in other countries by reforming their laws.

Referring to the requests of international law firms to practise in the country, Bharadwaj said that already 10 lakh lawyers are working in the country and therefore, they would not get the nod to practise law in the country.

The function was also addressed by Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice, AK Patnaik, acting Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, Vijendra Jain and senior advocate Anand Mohan Mathur among others. The postal department has also released a special cover on the occasion of golden jubilee of the MP High Court.