THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The country’s governance system is less efficient even as we observe the platinum jubilee of the Constitution’s adoption, opined former SC Judge J Chelameswar. “I won’t say it is inefficient. But it is less efficient than required,” he said, calling for an introspection to identify the factors contributing to this inefficiency. Chelameswar was addressing the Constitutional Day celebration organised by the Institute of Parliamentary Affairs here on Tuesday.
He said the civil society’s ‘admiration’ for encounter killings was a dangerous trend which is exposing the failure of the system.
Justice Chelameswar recalled an incident in which people took out a procession to celebrate a suspicious encounter killing in Hyderabad in 2019.
The four men killed were accused of raping and killing a veterinarian. “After the killing, there was a procession in Hyderabad congratulating the police. People showered flower petals on officers involved in the incident.
This is a dangerous trend. Why is civil society celebrating it? Because the main system is failing. The system is not able to deliver justice expeditiously,” Chelameswar said, adding that the delay in the legal process was a cause for concern. Expeditious adjudication into such matters is “almost an impossibility”, he stated.
O R Kelu, Minister for the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, inaugurated the event. He said the equal justice envisaged in the Constitution is not available for all people in the country. Principles of secularism and federalism laid out in the Constitution are facing threat, he opined.
V K Prasanth MLA, Biveesh U C, director-general, Institute of Parliamentary Affairs, former MP A Sampath, journalist S R Sakthidharan and others spoke.