Government is Biggest Litigant: SC Judge

Justice Madan B Lokur, Supreme Court judge and member of the Mediation and Conciliation Project Monitoring Committee, on Saturday said that the vision and ideas of Dr B R Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, to keep the judiciary independent has been facing test of the time as it was the government which is the biggest litigant in almost all the courts across the country.

Justice Lokur was delivering the Raja and Rani Venugopal Pillai memorial lecture on  ‘Independent Judiciary and the Constitution’ on the High Court premises.

The judge while quoting various judgments of the Supreme Court on various issues that expanded the scope of vision of the law- makers during the last six decades, said that it is the duty of a judge to look beyond the legal arrangement to see whether an individual who is fighting against a mighty state is suffering on account of an unequal bargaining power. “The framers of our Constitution have described the autonomy of judiciary as the soul of our constitution,’’ Justice Lokur observed.

Referring to the recent decision of the Supreme Court that quashed the Centre’s idea of interfering in the judicial appointments through the National judicial appointments commission, Justice Lokur said that only those judges who adhere to the core values of the constitution can afford to be independent in their approach. The framers of Indian Constitution in their wisdom gave primacy to the rights of individuals against undue actions of the state and its authorities, he added.

“With this sole objective in mind a special bench (headed by himself) was constituted at the Supreme Court to look after the issues pertaining to social justice. To deliver justice to the socially and economically weak, this special bench has been giving series of directions and that the states have been complying with those orders”, Justice Lokur said.

Earlier, Justice Lokur inaugurated the mediation and arbitration centre on the high court premises. On this occasion, he called upon the advocates community to support this cause since it would better the judiciary as an institution and would serve the people with speedier justice.

Acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale, Acting Chief Justice of the Hyderabad High Court, and Justices R Subhash Reddy, G Chandraiah, Ramesh Ranganathan thanked Justice Lokur for the mediation initiative he had taken during his days as Chief Justice of this high court. Former judges, high court registrars, judicial officers and members of the legal fraternity attended the function.