Supreme Court holds 'National Conference to Address Issues Faced by State Judiciary'

New Delhi [India], February 2 (ANI): The Supreme Court has organised a "National Conference on Addressing Issues Faced by the State Judiciary" to engage in a meaningful dialogue with different stakeholders and functionaries in the state judiciary, in order to understand the challenges being faced by them and to chalk out a plan to address the same.
The conference held on February 1 under the guidance of Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna had four technical sessions, which covered diverse topics affecting the performance of the state judiciary.
The idea behind this Conference was to engage in a meaningful dialogue with different stakeholders and functionaries in the State Judiciary, especially the District Courts, to first understand the challenges being faced by them and thereafter, chalk out a plan to address the same.
The first technical session which was chaired by CJI Khanna and co-chaired by Justices Abhay S Oka, BV Nagarathna, and Dipankar Datta had discussions on various range of topics.
The discussion took place on ways to narrow the gulf between institution and disposal of cases, identification of case types flooding the judicial dockets, identification of bottlenecks in case disposal, and strategies to reduce the backlog of cases at different levels.
The second technical session, which was chaired by Justice BR Gavai and co-chaired by Justices PS Narasimha and KV Viswanathan, explored the feasibility of having a uniform case categorisation in different courts.
In this session, ways to leverage technology better to optimise the judicial processes were also deliberated upon, according to a press release issued by the apex court.
In the third technical session, which was chaired by Justice Surya Kant and co-chaired by Justices JK Maheshwari and Sudhanshu Dhulia, there were discussions about timely recruitment of judicial officers and court staff, continual recruitment/empanelment of public prosecutors/legal aid counsels/legal aid defence counsels, creation of a permanent IT and data cadre in all High Courts and District Courts.
The discussions were also held on the need for an objective and transparent transfer policy of judicial officers, and measures to enhance objectivity in the process of recommending suitable candidates from the District Judiciary for elevation to the High Courts.
In the fourth technical session, which was Chaired by CJI Khanna and co-chaired by Justices Vikram Nath, Justice MM Sundresh, and Bela Trivedi there were discussions on career progression and continuous performance evaluation of judicial officers, mentoring of judicial officers by inspecting judges as well as state judicial academies, need for establishing a common curriculum for training and capacity building of judicial officers, and ways of ensuring accountability of judicial officers and court staff.
Judges of the Supreme Court and Chief Justices and Judges of various High Courts graced the occasion.
The conference witnessed the participation of District Judges from all states and Union Territories.
Senior Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Law and Justice also attended the conference.
The statement issued by the top court said the conference gave an invaluable opportunity to all stakeholders within the judiciary to come together and engage in a meaningful dialogue to address the challenges faced by the state judiciary. (ANI)