Vidhi's Panel Discussion On Infrastructure Of India's District Courts: Key Highlights

The panel comprised of Retired Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed, Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria, Rama Krishnamachari and Reshma Sekhar. The discussion was moderated by Sumathi Chandrashekaran.

Ms Chandrashekaran navigated the discussion around the following broad themes

1. The importance of stakeholder engagement
2. The need to talk about second-order aspects such as qualitative analysis of the courts' infrastructure
3. Exploration of non-budgetary measures such as incentivisation mechanism, accountability, etc.
4. Critical Analysis of NCMS Baseline Standards

The discussion was preceded by a presentation highlighting the key findings of the report which was given by Diksha Sanyal. Ms. Sanyal also highlighted interesting findings from certain districts and laid emphasis on the fact that the report focuses not just on verifying the existence of infrastructural facilities but also highlights what litigants and other users think of these facilities.

Following are the key excerpts from the panel discussion

Justice (Retired) Badar Durrez Ahmed

1. There should be a collaborative effort between the government and the judiciary to improve the state of infrastructure at various district courts.
2. Roadmap should be prepared so that accountability can be properly ensured
3. The disparities in the performance of different States can be attributed to the difference in their sizes, number of courts and financial capacities
4. Witnesses in India are always made to stand, every witness box must have a chair. Moreover, each stakeholder's opinion must be sought to make court premises user friendly
5. We make buildings but we don't maintain them. It can be due to the fact the building proposals don't have maintenance costs included in them. Therefore, every building project budget must have a 10 year maintenance budget in it.

Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria

1. Courts are not meant for judges or lawyers, they are meant for litigants. Vidhi should be thanked for looking at the issue from the litigant's perspective
2. Grievance Redressal System doesn't work. Writing letters or making complaints about the infrastructural problem does not help.
3. Chief Justices of all High Courts shall recognise the urgency and significance of implementing the NCMS Baseline Standards
4. Funding from the central government has gone down considerably. Moreover, there's a false belief that only State governments have to fund the costs of judiciary infrastructure.

Rama Krishnamachari, Co-founder Disability and Equal Opportunity Centre

1. Provisions for reasonable accommodations such as sign language, visual aids, etc. is a must for ensuring meaningful access to Justice
2. The disability aspect has to be integrated in every parameter and the standards have to be set and subsequently achieved
3. Accessibility Audits are important but they've remained in the reports. Not much has happened to implement them. Therefore, such audits need to take place periodically and the strategy phase just involve the entire range - implementation, costing, post-completion audit.
4. Universal Design Principles shall be considered in designing amenities as they are very inclusive guidelines

Reshma Sekhar, Research Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy

1. Administration of States becomes difficult when there are more number of districts; probably one of the reasons behind the poor performance by States that have large number of courts
2. The ranking of States is not conclusive, it's relative. It only means that they meet the NCMS Baseline Standards and not that they are world-class courts
3. None of the district courts are performing well on the accessibility aspect.

Post the discussion, the panelists answered a wide range of questions from the audience which revolved around stakeholder engagement, feasibility of PPP model, infrastructural issues faced by the judges, budgetary issues, etc.

The copy of the copy can be accessed at the official website of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy