Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) Chairman Bibek Debroy on Friday said the judiciary needs to evolve its own norms internally to deal with delay in disposal of court cases.
Debroy further said that increasingly, the judiciary has become much more amenable to pressure from the bar.
"Increasingly, the judiciary has become much more amenable to pressure from the bar...We constantly ask questions to the other organs of the government but how many times do we ask questions on the part of judiciary," he said at an event here.
Debroy said he is not suggesting that someone from outside decide the work norms for the judiciary.
"Let the judiciary devise its own norm internally...but, surely, it cannot be the case that they will be an organisation which will not have its own norms," the EAC-PM chairman said.
Debroy said the broader issues of contract enforcement need to set against the broader agenda of faster justice delivery.
"We should ask ourselves that when the civil procedure court was amended in 2001 and 2002, it was felt that the average civil dispute after that amendment would be completed in one-and-a-half years. Has that happened? it has not happened.
"I happen to think that, if it is a civil dispute, you broadly know what the outcome is going to be... If you broadly know what is going to happen, one party to the dispute has a vested interest in ensuring the continuance of status quo," he said.
Debroy said that "we tend to blame the judiciary and we tend to blame the bar. But, I am pointing out that the litigant in civil dispute or at least in one half of civil dispute has tendency to also postpone. So, we have a nexus between the bar and the judiciary and in the case of civil disputes, the litigant also".
He added that to speed up civil disputes, there are "changes in statutes required but...this is where the litigant and the bar and the judiciary nexus comes in".
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