 "Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud")
Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud has said the “adjournment culture” should give way to a “culture of professionalism” in court. He was speaking as part of the ceremonial bench that sat on Sunday to mark 75 years of the Supreme Court.
“First, we must emerge out of the adjournment culture to a culture of professionalism. Second, we have to ensure that the length of oral arguments does not interminably delay judicial outcomes. Third, the legal profession must provide a level playing field for first-generation lawyers — men, women, and others from marginalised segments who have the will to work and the potential to succeed. And fourth, let us begin the conversation on long vacations and whether alternatives such as flexitime for lawyers and judges are possible,” he said.
The CJI also said that the present constitutional safeguards did not suffice to maintain the independence of the judiciary. “The Constitution entrenches several institutional safeguards for an independent judiciary such as a fixed retirement age and a bar against the alteration of the salary of judges after their appointment. However, these constitutional safeguards are not in themselves sufficient to ensure an independent judiciary.”
He explained that an independent judiciary meant one that was insulated from the executive and legislative branches, while also having judges free of human bias.
The CJI said the Supreme Court was soon going to migrate its digital data to a safe, secure, and sovereign cloud, in what would be a shot in the arm for the information technology set-up of the court. “Cloud storage would ensure privacy, integrity, high availability, and secure accessibility of Supreme Court’s domain data,” he said.
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“We are also on the verge of opening a war room equipped with technology that would enable the Supreme Court to monitor judicial data of the entire country in real-time by using the National Judicial Data Grid (a database) and iJuris, both of which are information-sharing platforms for the district judiciary. iJuris has been launched by the Supreme Court to monitor statistics of vacancies and infrastructure relating to the district judiciary,” he added.
The CJI also talked about how the legal profession was traditionally a domain of elite men.
“Times have changed. Women, traditionally underrepresented in the profession, now constitute 36.3 per cent of the working strength of the district judiciary. In the recruitment examination for junior civil judges conducted in several states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, more than 50 per cent of the selected candidates were women. In the Supreme Court of India, we hire law clerks-cum-research associates to assist the judges, out of which 41 per cent candidates are women this year,” he said.
Chief Justice Chandrachud pointed out that prior to 2024 only 12 women were designated as “senior advocates” in the history of the Supreme Court over the last 74 years.
“Last week, the Supreme Court designated 11 women coming from different parts of the country as senior advocates at one selection. Our legitimacy will endure from the inclusion of diverse sections of the population in our system. Therefore, we need to make more efforts to bring different sections of the society into the legal profession. For instance, the representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is quite low both at the Bar as well as on the Bench,” he said.
Former Supreme Court judges Justices A K Sikri, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Ajay Rastogi, chief justices of all the high courts, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Attorney General R Venkataramani and Supreme Court Bar Association President Dr Adish C Aggarwala were among those present on the occasion.
