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| Why is the Supreme Court of India considered a “very special kind of court”? |
- It is special because it acts as a final court of appeal; its decisions are determinative; its pronouncements constitute the law of the land.
- And it is very special because under our political structure, the court acts as the ultimate arbiter on disputes concerning any interpretation of the Constitution.
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| But why according to critics it is not able to perform its special role? |
- Because of the enormity of its burden.
- The Indian Supreme Court is a multifarious institution. It often tasks itself with ruling on run-of-the-mill civil and criminal appeals. The court’s docket, in fact, tends to burst with seemingly mundane disputes. These tend to include, to name but a few typical cases, rent control quarrels between landlords and tenants, factual squabbles over tax assessments, internal managerial rows concerning societies and trusts, and what not!
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| So what is the way to ease the court’s burden? |
- Establishment of a National Court of Appeal (NCA) that would act as an intermediate forum between the Supreme Court and the various high courts of India.
- Recently Supreme Court not only ordered notice to the Union of India but also proposed to refer questions of law concerning the establishment of such a court to a constitution bench of five judges.
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| What happened in shreya singhal case and what is its impact on trolling? |
- In the Shreya Singhal versus the Union judgment in March 2015, the SC scrapped Section 66 A of the Information Technology Act 2000 calling it”unconstitutional” as it interfered with the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution.
- It mandated jail up to three years and a fine for those using a computer ora communication device to send grossly offensive or menacing information or electronic messages to people with the purpose of annoying or inconveniencing them.
- Since March 2015, trolling has begun to assume alarming proportions.Reason: there is no law currently to deal with it.
- The repealed provision was, after all, the only legal remedy victims ofsocial media trolling could turn to until then.
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| Why to create NCA? |
- According to its proponents, the NCA, which would be headquartered inNew Delhi, and which would have different regional benches, would relieve the Supreme Court of the weight of hearing regular civil and criminal appeals, allowing the court to concentrate on determining only fundamental questions of constitutional importance.
- Additionally, NCA’s regional benches would allow greater access to litigants from remote parts of the country, for whom the distance to New Delhi acts as a grave barrier to justice.
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| View of critics on this suggestion? |
- It’s an over-simplified suggestion and instead of this we make changes that are more pragmatic, that place an emphasis on the strengthening of the base of India’s judicial edifice.
- It is difficult to understand how the creation of an NCA would somehow ease the burden on the Supreme Court
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| What should be done therefore?? |
- What the NCA is meant to do, therefore, can quite easily be achieved by strengthening the lower judiciary, which generally constitutes the courts of first instance.
- Correspondingly, as was always intended, the high courts can be viewed as the regular — and, in most cases, final — appellate court. No doubt, to achieve this, it is necessary that there is greater rigour involved in choosing our judges.
- If socially conscious and meritorious women and men, who subscribe to the best constitutional values, are elevated as judges to our subordinate judiciary and the high courts, the idea of viewing the Supreme Court as a routine court of appeal can be renounced altogether.
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