Citizens should not be afraid of approaching courts: CJI Chandrachud
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court has acted as a "people's court" and citizens should not be afraid of going to courts or view it as the last resort, Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud said on Sunday.
Justice Chandrachud said just as the Constitution allows us to resolve political differences through established democratic institutions and processes, the courts system helps in resolving many disagreements through established principles and processes.
"In this way, every case in every court in the country is an extension of constitutional governance," the CJI said while speaking at the inauguration of the Constitution Day celebrations at the apex court.
President Droupadi Murmu delivered the inaugural address at the programme, which was also attended by apex court judges Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and others.
In his address, the CJI said, "In the last seven decades, the Supreme Court of India has acted as a people's court. Thousands of citizens have approached its doors with the faith that they will get justice through this institution".
He said citizens come to court to seek protection of their personal liberty, accountability against unlawful arrests, protection of rights of bonded labourers, tribals seeking protection of their homelands, prevention of social evils such as manual scavenging and even hoping for interference to get clean air.
"These cases are not just citation or statistics for the court. These cases resemble the expectations of people from the Supreme Court as well as the court's own commitment to deliver justice to the citizens," Justice Chandrachud said.
He said the apex court was perhaps the only court in the world where any citizen can set in motion the constitutional machinery of the Supreme Court simply by writing to the CJI.
Apart from ensuring that citizens get justice through its judgements, the apex court has been making continuous endeavours to ensure that its administrative processes were citizen centric so that people feel the connection with working of courts, he said.
While highlighting the steps taken for dealing with the issue of overcrowding in prisons which was flagged by the President on the Constitution Day last year, the CJI said the goal behind these initiatives was to ensure that people feel that the constitutional institution of judiciary was working for them.
"Individuals should not be afraid of going to courts or view it as the last resort. Rather it is my hope that by our efforts, citizens of every class, caste and creed can repose trust in our court system and view it as a fair and effective forum to enforce the rights," he said.
"Sometimes, we as a society may frown on litigation as a disreputable entanglement. But just as the Constitution allows us to resolve our political differences through established democratic institutions and processes, our courts system helps resolve our many disagreements through established principles and processes," he said.
Justice Chandrachud said courts were now live streaming their proceedings and this decision was taken with a view that citizens should know what was happening inside court rooms.
"Constant media reporting about proceedings of courts indicates the engagement of the public with the working of the court rooms," he said, adding, the top court also took a decision to translate its verdicts to regional languages with the help of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
"As of November 25, 2023, the Supreme Court has delivered 36,068 judgements in English from the date of its first sitting. But proceedings in our district courts are not conducted in English," he said.
The CJI said all of these judgements were available for free on the e-SCR platform, which was launched in January this year.
"Today, we are launching the e-SCR in Hindi as 21,388 judgements have been translated into Hindi, vetted and uploaded on the e-SCR portal," he said.
Besides, 9,276 verdicts as of last evening have been translated into other Indian languages, including Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Bengali and Urdu, he said.
Talking about technology and its use by the judiciary, he spoke about the launch of 'e-sewa kendras' in all courts to ensure that no citizen was left behind in the judicial process.
"Technology is not meant to distance us from our citizens but to take us into the lives of our citizens. We embrace our citizens as co-equal partners in a shared national endeavour," he said.
The CJI said on the Constitution day last year, the President had raised concern over overcrowding of prisons and incarceration of citizens from marginalised background.
" I want to assure you (President) that we are constantly working to ensure that legal processes become easier and simplified so that citizens don't languish in jails unnecessarily," he said.
Justice Chandrachud said version 2.0 of the Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records (FASTER) application would be launched Sunday and it ensures that judicial order of release of a person was immediately transferred to jail authorities, district courts and high courts via electronic means so that person was released on time.
The CJI said he has also tasked the Centre for Research and Planning of the Supreme Court to come up with a project to improve the conditions of jails and to improve on obsolete prison manuals.
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Bengaluru jail introduces biometric tracking system for prisoners
Bengaluru: In a bid to curb misconduct and illegal activities inside Parappana Agrahara Central Prison, prison authorities have introduced a new ‘Prisoners Tracking Movement System’ under which inmates will have to undergo biometric verification while entering every barrack.
According to jail officials, biometric systems have been installed across all major sections of the prison, including barracks, visitor rooms, hospital, canteen, kitchen, library, playground, handicraft units and bakery sections. Staff members have also been deployed at these locations.
Officials said inmates visiting the visitors’ room must now obtain a digital token after biometric verification. Details such as the prisoner’s name, identification number and entry time will be updated in the prison software system. This will help authorities maintain a complete digital record of inmates visiting and returning from meeting rooms.
Similar systems have also been introduced at entry points of the hospital, library and other barracks accessed for work-related purposes. Officials said the system will help identify prisoners involved in suspicious or illegal activities with other inmates and enable authorities to track how much time a prisoner spends at different locations inside the prison.
Authorities stated that AI-powered cameras were already being used inside the prison to monitor inmates as well as prison staff. Along with this, digital tracking of prisoner phone calls and a digital token system for visitor meetings have now been added to strengthen surveillance over inmate movement. Officials said the project has been implemented at a cost of around Rs 2.25 crore.
The prison department has also introduced a canteen usage tracking system to monitor prisoners’ spending patterns. Instead of direct cash payments, inmates can purchase bakery items and snacks using wallets or coupons issued within the prison system.
Officials said the digital system will record details including the buyer’s name, items purchased, quantity, date, time and remaining wallet balance. This will allow prison authorities to maintain complete expenditure records of inmates.
