Revolution, not reform, needed for judiciary to service commoners: Justice Gogoi

A "revolution, not reform" is needed to keep the institution of judiciary serviceable for the common man, senior Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjan Gogoi said today, asserting that the judiciary would have to be more "pro-active" and on the "front foot".

The assertions were made by Justice Gogoi, who is the senior-most judge and is likely to be recommended to succeed Chief Justice Dipak Misra on his retirement on October 2.

Delivering the third Ramnath Goenka Memorial Lecture on "Vision of Justice", the judge told a packed Teen Murti Bhavan auditorium here that the judiciary was the "last bastion of hope" and has been "a proud guardian of the great constitutional vision". The institution has been endowed with great societal trust.

Justice Gogoi, who along with Justices J Chelameswar (since retired), M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph had held a controversial January 12 presser in which a litany of allegations were made against the Chief Justice of India, also said that "independent journalists and sometimes noisy judges" were the first line of defence for democracy.

Referring to an article (from The Economist) titled 'How Democracy Dies' published in the Indian Express, he said that "...independent judges and noisy journalists are democracy's first line of defence Reports of the death of democracy are greatly exaggerated. But the least bad system of government ever devised, is in trouble. It needs defenders."
"It is the inertia really that has kept us going till now. But the way things stand today, court processes are a trial even before the trial has begun. While I cannot say if it is a collective failure on our part, but for a nation governed by the rule of law, is it not a matter of concern that to this extent at least, we are defying the idea of inclusiveness?
"The judiciary today is not a poor workman who blames his tools, but it is a workman with no tools. I am not going to saddle you with the figures that we keep consuming every day on pendency, arrears and judges' strength but in the light of what a French author had once said 'Everything has been said already, but as no one listens, we must begin again'."