At Goa conclave, experts suggest digitisation of legal records, legislation to ensure data privacy

A legislation to ensure data privacy, digitisation of legal records and higher budgetary allotment for the judicial sector are some of the recommendations made by academicians and legal experts to improve the state of the law in the country.

Several experts discussed issues like excessive delay in the delivery of justice, high costs of litigation, the dearth of qualified lawyers and vacancy of judges in courts at all levels during the just-concluded fifth edition of Difficult Dialogues, an annual forum examining issues of contemporary relevance in South Asia, here.

A panel on "Accountability vs independence of judiciary: Is the balance right?' noted that the present collegium system of appointing judges in India needs to be relooked and proposals from various sections of society should be considered to work out an improved framework.

It proposed a framework that does a detailed analysis of a judge's performance to work out various stages and points in between where corrective checks and remedial action can be taken.

Inclusion of legal academics and jurists in the legal setup, software to set up dates for legal hearings and the live streaming of court proceedings as it happens for parliamentary proceedings were among other recommendations made by the panel to improve transparency and accountability in the judiciary.

The experts pitched for a higher allotment of the national budget to the judiciary sector.

On 'Gender, legal profession and the courts: Is there a backlash?', SC judge (retd) Sujata Manohar, advocate Vrinda Grover and director of Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in the Oxford University Linda Mulcahy noted that gender diversity continues to be lopsided.

In India, only 11 per cent of the judges in the high courts are women whereas the female representation in the judiciary in the UK is 23 per cent, Greece 65 per cent and 78 per cent in Slovenia.

They recommended an overhauling of the courtroom culture and architecture in India, ensuring that there is nothing misogynistic in the way court conversation takes place or the way the proceedings and judgements are recorded.

The experts also debated the issue of sustainability and suggested that laws like the Environment Protection Act (EPA) and the Coastal Regulation Zone Act (CRZ) and bodies like the National Green Tribunal (NGT) take a more holistic approach so that both economic development and sustenance of environment go hand in hand.

India is a signatory to most international environment agreements and also has strong legislations but interpretation and implementation are the problem areas, a panel highlighted.

"Environmental laws are the most amended laws in the country. This often creates confusion and the judiciary needs to examine these amendments and check whether it is being done to benefit any organization," it said.

It recommended that apart from the judiciary, the citizens, civil society, technologists and scientists should play a role by questioning these amendments which are placed in the public domain for 60 or 90 days.

Other speakers in the three-day conference that began on February 14 included Additional Solicitor General of India Pinky Anand, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, activist Farah Naqvi and Supreme Court advocate Geeta Luthra.

According to Surina Narula, founder of 'Difficult Dialogues', the task in this edition was to explore the state of the law in the country as the judiciary and the legal framework is an important part of a diverse nation like India for providing justice, equality and prosperity to all its citizens.