Expressing great concern over the 'unusually high amount of violence, including such acts against women in the state, outgoing Chief Justice of Tripura High Court Deepak Gupta remarked that 'may be due to terrorism people have become immune to violence'.
Justice Gupta who was interacting with media persons yesterday, viewed that settlement of disputes should not be done by extra constitutional bodies those do not have legal basis.
At a time when the Chief Justice of India Tirath Singh Thakur said there is an inadequate number of judges to handle pending cases, according to outgoing Tripura High Court Chief Justice in the Northeastern states along with Tripura less number of cases being registered in the court is a matter of worry.
He appealed to the citizens to come to court and raise their problem for settlement of disputes and should extra constitutional bodies for settled as they are not legitimate. Moreover, he said that "in some of the Northeastern state traditional tribal courts go much beyond the jurisdiction; they have been settling rape cases, murder cases. That cannot be settled by tribal court."
Justice Gupta said that the traditional tribal laws of the region which needs immediate codification.
On determining the reason behind less number of people coming to court the Chief Justice Gupta felt may be due to low level of awareness about constitutional rights and fundamental rights of the citizens in the region beside poverty.
On the achievements of the High Court of Tripura during the last three years, Justice Gupta pointed out that there were a total number of 6,615 pending cases. But now pendency is reduced to 2,804 and pendency of old cases reduced to only 90 and which is just three percent.
Moreover, the Tripura High Court became the first in the country to introduce SMS service whereby every litigant and lawyers get information about the next date of hearing of the case in time. The same service is now operating in 59 of 66 lower courts of Tripura. After Tripura, push based SMS service started in many other high courts and also in the Supreme Court, Justice Gupta stated.
Justice Gupta is leaving Tripura today and would assume charge as the Chief Justice of the Chhattisgarh High Court on Monday. He opined that without a high court, a state cannot be called complete and added that such courts have to be independent of the state so that it can keep a tab and prevent the legislative and the executive from violating the Constitution.
Justice Tinlianthang Vaiphei of the Gauhati High Court has been appointed as the next Chief Justice of Tripura.
