The power of the Supreme Court has been expanded by interpretation far beyond what the founding fathers of the Constitution planned. Though it was meant to deal mainly with constitutional questions, it has taken upon itself tasks no other court in the world has done, gaining power at each step. This has strained the institution, already suffering from a shortage of judges, infrastructure and poor funding.
This has not deterred the court from taking up more responsibilities than it can handle. It has set up monitoring committees in scores of worthy causes. Last week, it appointed two of its former judges to monitor the investigation into black money stashed in foreign tax havens. The monitoring of the 2G spectrum scam is still lingering. Coalgate is another example.
It would seem that the sincere efforts of the court to monitor the affairs of the country in different fields are going overboard. Every Friday, more than 3,000 applications inside scores of writ petitions are placed before the "forest bench" of the court. They range from the closure of a nondescript saw mill on the border of a forest, removal of machinery from a mining area, settling the border between Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for mining purposes and compensation for losses caused by authorities misinterpreting the orders of the court. A few generations of judges have dealt with the complaints over the years, assisted by a monitoring committee, but there is no end in sight. Applications on individual complaints continue to mount and development work at distant work sites might be in suspended animation.
Last week, the court burdened itself with another monitoring committee, seeking to reform the chaotic field of road safety. In its judgment in the case, S Rajaseekaran vs Union of India, it asked the committee to deal with several aspects of the issue (prompted by statistics such as 130,000 road deaths and 500,000 injured every year) such as licensing, vehicle fitness, traffic signals, drunken driving, road engineering, educating the public and emergency care, amendment to the Motor Vehicles Act, to name a few.
The court admitted that the "journey that has been undertaken would be long and arduous; it is difficult to visualise when the same would end, if at all." But it wants to ensure success and, therefore, will "constantly supervise" the steps undertaken by the central and state governments. The committee, which will be headed by a Supreme Court judge who is about to retire, will report to the court periodically and there are eight detailed guidelines to the governments and the committee regarding their roles. Though all these orders are made with good intentions, the question is whether the strained shoulders of the court can take up more responsibilities when it cannot dispose of 66,000 cases, some of them pending before it for decades.
Before jaywalking into unchartered administrative territory, jammed with police corruption, ambulance-chasing lawyers, stock witnesses and overheated tribunals, the Supreme Court must ponder whether these issues are judicially manageable. There is enough work to be done at home before launching reforms outside. For instance, one bench had referred 20 knotty questions touching only on the payment of compensation. The insurance companies have also raised several issues. The high courts and different benches of the Supreme Court itself have given conflicting decisions arising from the outdated Motor Vehicles Act. These files are gathering dust even now, waiting for answers.
Just for instance, a dilemma from a pending case has arisen in these days of terrorism about the murder of the driver and abandonment of the vehicle. Some courts have held that it would be an "accident" and, therefore, the insurer would be liable. Some others do not think so. There is then the question of inflation, which has not been recognised by the Act and rarely offset by the judges, leading to low damages. Victims have to climb up the judicial pyramid on crutches to get a decent sum.
The court itself has noted these chronic ills when it remarked that "motor accident victims are doubly unfortunate - first in getting involved in an accident, and second, in not getting any compensation." (Jai Prakash vs National Insurance Co).
There are enough reforms that can start from within the judiciary. The principles must be laid down clearly to help the courts below decide road accident cases. If the Supreme Court takes up this task, it will have little time to solve all the mishaps, present and future, occurring on the road. Some work must be left to the Law Commission and the government machinery. The government has given committees a bad name ("a camel is a horse designed by a government committee). The court should be careful not to be stranded in murky terrain without a road map.
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