SC to examine if it can convert itself to US-style Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Chief justice of India TS Thakur on Friday set into motion a judicial process that will examine whether it would be possible to convert the country's apex court--reeling under a backlog of more than 63,000 cases--into a US-style Supreme Court that jointly decides on a handful of constitutional cases a year.

A top court bench, headed by Thakur and comprising justices R Banumathi and UU Lalit, issued notices to the central government on a public interest litigation, which cited the example of the US, UK and Australian Supreme Courts to argue that a similar constitutional role be adopted by India's top court.

The Supreme Court would then only decide those cases that are regarded as constitutional matters of national importance or involving important issues of law.

That would free the court up to develop new jurisprudence and decide on critical issues such as euthanasia and the death penalty, avoiding routine appeals on every high court decision -- interim or final. Some of the 63,000 pending cases came to the court as far back as 2004.

There have been earlier demands that a separate national court of appeal be established with benches in the four corners of the country to deal with more mundane litigation by way of appeals against high court and lower court rulings.

Those proposals had been rejected by the Union government. Now the court will explore afresh the feasibility of creating a dual setup–one to deal with ordinary litigation and another for constitutional matters.

The chief justice appointed senior advocates Salman Khurshid and KK Venugopal as amicus curiae to help the court decide the issue. Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi was asked to submit the Union government’s views on the subject at the next hearing on March 16.

The PIL was filed by V Vasanthakumar, a law student from Puducherry.

He warned that without a remedy, the top court would be overwhelmed by cases and would fail in its role of being the constitutional guardian of the fundamental rights of citizens.

He also reminded the court of a 1986 ruling that sought to restrict itself to constitutional issues. This court was only supposed to deal with cases in which the law was not correctly interpreted by the lower courts or tribunals, he said.

The government had rejected his November 21, 2013, representation to this effect, he said.

Justifying the need to have four national court of appeal benches, he said that India was a vast country and much money and energy was wasted in challenging routine orders at the Supreme Court.

“Of late, all kinds of special leave petitions are being filed in this court against every kind of order," he said. "High courts should be the final authority in such matters to uphold the majesty of the state judiciary.”

Litigants find it difficult to secure justice from the highest court of the land because of the expense involved and many cases are left unchallenged, he said.