Nagpur: Clearing the air over the statement of Union finance minister Arun Jaitley that judiciary is interfering in State affairs, Union law minister Sadanand Gowda said, “it is an independent authority and there are no clashes between the Centre and the judicial system,”. Gowda was addressing media person in a ‘Meet the Press’ event held on Friday.
“Though, the government is doing everything to speed up the judicial process, it has no hand in the appointments of judges. The government junked 1,175 outdated laws from the Constitution. The Centre will remove 422 more such laws and State 222. 66,000 cases were pending in courts three years ago. Now, despite severe staff crunch, only 58,000 are remaining,” said Gowda.
Programmes like Lok Adalats are an effort to hasten the judicial process and to conclude the long pending cases. The government is also concentrating on computerisation and digitization of courts. The project is underway at 14,500 courts and 1,640 crore has been approved for this. Thirty-one judges were appointed last year between January and March, while 51 were appointed during same period this year. We are trying to increase the number of judges” said Gowda.
Stricter amendments have been made in Arbitration Act after thorough research, informed Gowda. “The number of cases is being controlled through the National Litigation Policy and efforts are on to improve infrastructure in judiciary. Important steps are being taken to change the names of Bombay and Madras high courts to Mumbai and Chennai high courts,” informed Gowda.
He also threw light on the achievements of BJP government in last two years.
No proposal for smaller States
When asked about formation of smaller states, Gowda replied, Centre has not received any proposal for formation of smaller States so far. “The government is using modern technology to bring people and government together,” said Gowda. About Bihar, he said, “It’s ‘Jungle Raj part-2’ in the making,”.
