"Dismissed For Non-Prosecution" : Supreme Court Dismisses Plea Seeking Allocation Of Separate Funds For Judiciary After Counsels Fail To Appear

During the hearing today, when the matter was called for hearing before a Bench led by CJI Bobde, the matter had to be passed over as no Counsels appeared before the Court. When the matter was called out again at the end of the Bench, the Court directed that the matter be dismissed as the Counsels failed to appear again on second call.

A three-judge Bench of CJI Bobde, Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramaniam issued the direction in a plea seeking direction to Centre and State government to allocate separate and adequate funds for smooth, effective and impartial functioning of the judicial system.The plea also sought directions for the constitution of a separate Secretariat with the Supreme Court and High Courts to manage the funds allocated to the judiciary.

According to the public interest petition, the allocation of the bigger portion of budget in the segments other than judiciary amounts to parallel situation where judiciary is not able to discharge its functions in the way its is expected to do so. The Central and State Governments do not even consider judiciary important so as to organise funds or to make any establishment in the infrastructure of the judiciary.

The petitioner through his plea argued that the political discussion on the judiciary and pending matters relates to the vacancy in the court of Justice but if appointed then the judiciary needs to have appropriate funds to tackle such amount of loads. The allocation of the bigger portion of budget in the segments other than judiciary amounts to parallel situation where judiciary is not able to discharge its' functions in the way it is expected to do so.

The plea also contended that the Judiciary is fully dependent for allocation of funds on the Centre and State Government which are the regular 'litigants before the Courts of law, and due to such dependency, the courts of law have influence of the governments in its judgments.

"In the last more than 70 years, there has been no proper allocation of funds adequate with the corresponding increase in population, legal awareness, increase in legislation and as such the same is a clear violation of the basic structure of the Constitution as well as basic human rights" the plea reads

The plea further stated that there are many Chief Justices of India who have also observed and held that the poor allocation to the judiciary has been a contentious issue. It is also observed that the Governments hardly spend on the judiciary less than 0. 5 per cent of the budget.

The plea was filed by Advocate Harisha SR and drawn by Advocate Reepak Kansal.

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