Thread by @barandbench

Justice (Retd.) Goda Raghuram, Justice (Retd.) Prabha Sridevan, Justice (Retd.) Pradeep Nandrajog, Partner at Samvad Partners Harish Narasappa and Senior Advocate Parag Tripathi will discuss, “Justice Delivery: New Frontiers” at the Law & Economics Policy Conference today.

Dr. KP Krishnan will moderate the Conference.

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Dr. KP Krishnan begins an introductory address.
Three distinct subtopics will be covered during the conference

- The working of tribunals as a dispenser for justice.
- Judicial regulation of Statutory Regulatory Authorities.
- Management of Tribunals.

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Justice (Retd.) Goda Raghuram, Former Judge of High Court of Andhra Pradesh Former President of CESTAT Former Director, National Judicial Academy, Bhopal is invited to start his address.

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Justice Raghuram: I was reflecting what the necessity to have a tribunal is. The critical justifications are: overly elaborate procedures in our Courts, and overburdened Courts.

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Justice Raghuram: If you reflect on the broadly shared reasons offered for tribunals judicial or administrative review must positively answer the requirements, why that tribunal is constituted.

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Justice Raghuram: I have more than 4 decades of exposure to administrative tribunals.

I found no justification to remove service matters from the Courts system.

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Justice Raghuram: A disturbing fact I find particularly in the last decade is that an appeal is created to the SC. You are disabling HC judges of a domain familiarity and expertise. They sit as virgin adjudicator in the highest Court in that domain.

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Justice Raghuram: I hope I am wrong about this- one assumption that appears of the executive branch is that you drown the SC in volumes, so that they will not seriously commandeer the considerations of a tribunal.

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Justice (Retd.) Prabha Sridevan, Former Judge of the Madras High Court, Former Chairperson of the IPAB (Intellectual Property Appellate Board) starts her address.

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Justice (Retd.) Prabha Sridevan: I am not a supporter of tribunalisation.

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Justice Sridevan: The two years I spent at IPAB were the most stimulating but I do not support tribunalisation.

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Justice Sridevan: I detest tribunals being called a quasi-judicial body. Anyone seeking justice wants justice, not three fourths of a justice.

No tribunal is extra constitutional. It has to be constitutional.

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Justice Sridevan: Tribunals are temporary stents to problems. If you see the commencement of any tribunal- it is always a knee jerk reaction.

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Justice Sridevan: AS HC Judges, our only problem is to decide the cases we don’t have to deal with the rest. As a head of a tribunal, I don’t think there is any ministry that I haven’t stepped into- south block or north block, for pay parity for my staff etc.

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Justice Sridevan: Was the IPAB equipped to deal with important cases? No.

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Justice Sridevan: The growth of tribunals has been haphazard without any plan. As regards speedy disposal, the SC said, “if you cant fill it up, please close them”. I think tribunals have overstayed their welcome.

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Justice (Retd.) Pradeep Nandrajog Former Chief Justice of Bombay High Court Former Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court and Former Judge of Delhi High Court begins his address.

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Justice Nandrajog: When we say that it is time to wrap up Tribunals, we must remember there is a cry for specialised benches of the Courts itself. So whether you have a specialised bench of the Court or a Tribunal, it is two sides of the same coin.

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Justice Nandrajog: We come to the point of adjudication by the specialists- should we have a technical member or a judicial member? Before the economic activity took over in this country, let us not forget, 50% of the civil litigation in this country was revenue related.

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Justice Nandrajog: This division that we tend to create is on the belief that a judicial member would bring impartiality, more confidence to the consumer of justice.

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Justice Nandrajog: We spoke of transfers. Don’t Courts have transfers? Like Justice Raghuram the problem is not to find the problem, the problem is to find the solution. We only need people with a spine. So firstly, I find no problem in Tribunals.

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Justice Nandrajog: We need to find people who are talented, but would never let anyone put a price on it.

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Justice Nandrajog: We spoke of challenges with infrastructure, there is the same problem with High Courts. As a Chief Justice in certain HCs, we had one steno attached to 2-3 Courts.

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Justice Nandrajog: We need to create a body which is free from executive influence that can make the appointments.

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Justice Nandrajog: Why cannot Court fees be increased to make Tribunals self-sufficient?

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Justice Nandrajog: I think the only way forward is to have a body to make recruitments of independent recruitments.

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Justice Nandrajog: If Panchayats can sit under a tree and dispense justice, why cant a judge sit under a Banyan Tree and dispense Justice?

You don’t need a Courtroom.

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Justice Nandrajog: So, I cannot agree with my brother & sister here regarding Tribunals.

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Justice Nandrajog: I have full faith in the executive & the judiciary provided there is the right man on the right seat.

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Harish Narasappa, Partner, Samvad Partners
Co-Founder, DAKSH & ADReS begins his address.

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Narasappa: What I found most fascinating is the almost commonality in the three speakers so it makes my job a bit easier.

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Narasappa: I agree with Justice Sridevan and Justice Raghuram, but then I ask what next? I believe this is where our discussion stops. In the last 30 years, in terms of justice delivery, I feel we have not moved forward.

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Narasappa: I have a few suggestions. One, the need for technology- the last 15 months have shown that technology has been adopted willingly AND unwillingly by the judiciary.

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Narasappa: There needs to be an open mindedness in the approach to this solution. Otherwise, we will always be inward looking.

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Narasappa: If look at areas like securities or antitrust where there is an element of special economic knowledge.

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Narasappa: If you look at appointments to the HC, there is uniformity beyond belief.
If you take one CV of a High Court Judge, you can just take one and just change names and the place of practice.

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Narasappa: If we want specialisation in Court, we have to start appointing people from diverse backgrounds to the High Court.

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Parag Tripathi Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India Former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India starts his address.

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Tripathi: I have a slightly different approach. We have a problem of numbers. Our adjudicatory mechanism suffers because we do not have enough adjudicators.

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Tripathi: Only yesterday, the Supreme Court directed States to fill up vacancies in Tribunals. So, this is a big problem.

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Tripathi: there is a question of domain expertise, its importance cannot be overstated. Our bureaucracy is quite an extra ordinary bunch of dedicated people.

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Tripathi: The problem is when you have technical members, they become hesitant when faced with juristic principles especially while being bullied by Senior Counsels.

This can be done away with by having a formal introduction to Law.

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Tripathi: Ultimately what you need is a view where you have to fundamentally reform the adjudication system with very little avenue for appeal.

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Senior Advocate Parag Tripathi concludes his discussion.

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Justice Raghuram responds to Justice Nandrajog’s opinion: I believe in the mainline courts there is a system of checks and balances. Whereas in tribunals there is no audit of performance.

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Justice Sridevan responds to Justice Nandrajog’s opinion: We are talking of two justice delivery institutions. If certain jurisprudence requires specialised knowledge, then you can ask a specialist to help you.

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Justice Sridevan: We are still stuck with Court management techniques that are decades old. That needs to change.

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Dr. KP Krishnan hands over the mic to Sunanda Nair, Director of Strategic Planning, INET for concluding remarks. Nair thanks the speakers for the robust discussion before ending the conference.

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