Work hard to overcome flaws in judicial system: Balakrishnan

Chennai, Mar 4 (UNI) Adimitting that certain flaws exist in the judicial system, Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan today said each unit in the system must work hard to cleanse it.

Laying the foundation stone for the Law Officer's building here in the premises of the High Court, Mr Balakrishnan said the delay in quicker disposal of cases had resulted in people losing confidence in judiciary.

''People have lot of expectations from judiciary. But on many occasions we are unable to discharge ourselves,'' he said.

Citing lack of judicial infrastructure and shortage of judges as the main reason for the delay in settling cases, he said though the quantum of litigations had increased manifold, the infrastructure had not developed proportionately to deal with the high number of cases.

He said the judicial academy with the help of a panel of judges, selected from High Courts, would conduct a study on the reasons for delay in delivering judgements in cases.

Earlier, inaugurating the Digital display board on the occasion, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said the state government would allocate Rs 50 crore in the ensuing Budget to the judiciary to upgrade its infrastructure, including computerisation of courts.

Inaugurating the Wi-fi system installed at the High Court on the occasion, Union IT and Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said the Centre had accorded a financial allocation of Rs 442 crore for computerisation and networking of 13,000 district courts and sub-ordinate courts in the country.

He said as part of the IT initiative, the Supreme Court was in the process of implementing digitally certified copies and ''e-courts'' for speedy disposal of cases.

The Centre would also provide Laptops to all judges in the country as part of its IT initiative.

Supreme Court Judges A R Lakshmanan, V S Sirpukar, Markanday Katju, Madras High Court Chief Justice A P Shah and Tamil Nadu Law and Public Works Minister Duraimurugan, also spoke on the occasion.

UNI