CHENNAI: The Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) has strongly condemned Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, for his recent ‘unbalanced’ and ‘intemperate’ comments on media on the functioning of the courts.
Pointing to his comments that judges of the higher courts are taking vacations for summer, winter and festivals, the BCTN noted that those who are acquainted with the court system will know that judges work for long hours and are burdened with cumbersome tasks which require them to stay in courts beyond regular hours.
“Contrary to public perception, weekends and vacations are spent writing and correcting the judgments and orders,” P S Amalraj, president of BCTN, said in a statement.
He said Sanjeev Sanyal, being an economist, ought to know that budgets for the judiciary still form a part of the non-planned expenditure. The judge to population ratio was 50 per million, and now is 21 per million, he added.
Referring to Sanyal’s comments that 50 million cases are pending in the judiciary, Amalraj noted 73% of these cases are related to government departments. Sanyal’s vision of the modern judiciary would be pointless if ‘medieval’ executive governments continue to exhibit tardiness, red tapism and bureaucratic inefficiency which push our citizens to turn to the courts for redressal, he added.