Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry condemns comments against judiciary by PM’s Economic Advisory Council member

Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry condemns PM's advisor for criticizing judiciary, highlighting budgetary constraints and workload challenges.

The Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) has passed an unanimous resolution condemning the adverse comments made regarding the functioning of the judiciary in the country by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member Sanjeev Sanyal in an interview to a YouTube channel.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday, BCTNP chairman P.S. Amalraj said, Mr. Sanyal had termed the Indian judiciary as a medieval era institution in which 50 million cases were struck and called it a “completely absurd system” in which judges go on summer vacations, winter vacations, Dussehra vacations and so on.

Recalling the words of the Supreme Court that “those who attack the Judiciary must remember that they are attacking an institution which is indispensable for the survival of the rule of law but which has no means of defending itself,” the BCTNP said, it was duty of the bar council to rebut such scurrilous attacks.

It said, the criticism about the judges enjoying vacations stems from non familiarity with the working pattern of the judges who work long hours, get burdened with cumbersome administrative tasks, read papers and dictate judgements even beyond the court working hours and spend vacations too for professional work.

“Mr. Sanyal, as an economist, surely ought to know that despite the recommendation of the 127th Law Commission, made over 37 years ago, budgets for the judiciary still form a part of the non planned expenditure. Consequently, it is pointless to turn around and accuse the judiciary of inefficiency when failure to provide adequate budgetary allocation for infrastructural development squarely lies at the door of the government,” the statement read.

Further, referring to an observation made by the Law Commission in 1987 that the optimal ratio should be set at 50 judges per million of the population, the Bar council said, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had in January 2024 stated on the floor of the Lok Sabha that the existing ratio was only 21 judges per million.

“We are therefore of the opinion that the executive does not have any moral or legal high ground to point fingers at the judiciary having left the judges to fend for themselves in tackling arrears and docket explosion,” the BCTNP said and highlighted that the government was the litigant in 73% of cases pending in the Supreme Court.