People losing faith in judiciary due to delayed justice: Sumitra Mahajan

AHMEDABAD: Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan today underlined the need to ensure speedy trials saying people are losing faith in judiciary due to delay in the delivery of justice.

"It is said that justice delayed is justice denied. In this context, it is very sad that the number of pending cases in our country is very high. Supreme Court has 63,800 pending cases, High Courts have 44 lakh such cases, while districts and lower courts have around two crore pending cases. Due to these pending cases, our citizens lose faith in judiciary," Mahajan said.

She was addressing the sixth convocation function of the Gujarat National Law University at Gandhinagar.

Mahajan said there are expectations from law universities to give suggestions on how to reduce pendency of cases in various courts.

On the occasion, she advocated strengthening of establishments like Lok Adalats, consumer forums, grievance redressal cells, legal aid and advisory boards to ensure easy and affordable justice saying there is a need to establish contacts between legislators and universities.

"We see that our legislators do not have guidance of experts from such universities and hence there is a different opinions on the issues like capital punishment, euthanasia, juveniles related crime and punishment for that and also for the common civil code.

"Law experts from such varsities should freely express their opinions on judicial activism and the limits of legal interventions for bureaucracy and legislatives," she added.

Mahajan awarded degrees to 188 law graduates and post-graduates and gold medals to 20 students of GNLU.

Gujarat Chief Minister Anandi Patel suggested that GNLU could tie up with labour court, women court and labour departments so that students can do internship there.