The judiciary of our country is the most powerful and decisive organ. It works on the guidelines, laws, sub-laws of the Indian Constitution. It is the commanding/superior-most body which is mandated to handle all the legal activities in India.
The question asked here is “whether the judiciary is same for all the people…” The question itself is incorrect to its understanding because the judiciary works on laws written in the Constitution and could modify the laws according to the need of the situation. Same judgement could not be justified for each and every situation. Which is why the judiciary has its sub-parts established across the country namely, the High Courts, the District courts, etc.
It is important to note that same judgement is not offered by the judiciary but instead we can expect it to give ‘fair’ judgement to all.
Although the laws might be same for everybody in the Constitution, but judgement cannot be same.
Hence, now stands the fact whether or not the judicial system is fair to the people of all castes, color, races and creed.
The motto of the Indian Judiciary is “Satyamev Jayate” which means “May truth always win”. But now it is a matter of doubt to look whether truth always wins or not. The judicial system of India vastly conveys this information through movies, trials in court or other means that let 100 culprits are exonerated but one innocent should not be punished. But many times we have seen the culprit walk free in the world whereas, the innocent who hasn’t committed any crime be locked up in jail. This prejudice does not criticize the judiciary but it does point a finger in its direction.
The reasons might be the major two: unavailability of proper proofs and lawyers.
• The court runs on evidence & proofs. It cannot sue anyone without any proof, be it the most dangerous criminal. But if strong evidence are found against the ruling government itself, it could be penalized by the judiciary. Hence, many times the unavailability of enough evidence to satiate the judgement could land an innocent in jail.
• Another reason is the accessibility to lawyers who are advanced and educated with the norms of law. It has been seen that only the rich can afford proper lawyers to fight their case, and on the other hand if the lawyer provided by the State fights from the other side then it still remains a probability for proper judgement to be issued. I’m not saying that those lawyers are not properly aware of the law, but the evidences, lawyers and other documents could be misused by the rich in order to win the case.
Thus, in many cases we have seen that these two factors may affect the judgement.
The following are some reasons which may contribute towards the judicial system:
• Due to the vast population of our country & the increasing crimes, there are innumerable cases which are still pending. This shows the inadequacy & inefficiency on the part of judicial system. Furthermore, the frustration of people by the number of pending cases leads to more crime and forces people to take law in their hands.
• 'When the rich wages the war, it is the poor who dies', rightly said by Jean Paul Sartre. When a poor hires a lawyers there are so many obstacles which could be noticed, like number of dates for rescheduling the case, adjourning the court for so many times, more efficient lawyers fighting from the opposition, etc. Hence, more the justice is delayed by these reasons more is the cost that the poor has to spend. As it has righty been said “Justice delayed is justice denied”
• There have been many cases where it took more than 20 years to hang a terrorist and more than 2 years to penalize him, even though everyone knew of his atrocious activities. The delaying in judgment causes many harmful consequences.
These factors may sometimes contribute to the judiciary giving an unfair judgement, in the opinion of many people. For this reason, it has been criticized by many since a few decades.
Therefore, new judicial organs called Lok Adalats and Fast track courts have been established for fast and fair judgement. Also, the Public Interest Litigation which could be filed by anyone who is deprived of resources is a spectacular entity.
- Despite of these, sometimes the judicial system is criticized of being ‘unfair’ by many. Thus, more honest and law-abiding minds need to be recruited as judges to counter this problem.
- The use of technology could come in handy to avoid rescheduling and multiple adjournments.
- One of the most significant facts is: the judiciary is the most supreme organ of our country and has a lot of power vested in its hands. Due to so much power and authority, it is likely to get corrupt also. Hence, constant check of power of judiciary by the governments is mandatory as well as all some information should be made public also for transparency in cases handled by judiciary (under the Right to Information Act).
There should be serious and strategic measures to let judiciary not become the puppet of the rich, and let poor not become the puppet of judiciary.
