HYDERABAD: Chief justice TBN Radhakrishnan of the High Court on Wednesday appealed to all citizens to live up to the constitutional goals and abide by the fundamental duties to take the nation forward.
Speaking after hoisting the national flag on the High Court premises here on Wednesday to mark the 72nd Independence Day celebrations, he said, “I salute the great leaders who led this nation to political freedom and the resultant independence that we celebrate every year. The fruits of independence can be attained only when India achieves the avowed goals and aspirations of this nation to ensure justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in terms of the constitutional vision and values. The society can progress in the social, economic and political spheres only by ensuring justice in those fields.”
Mentioning the work done by the High Court and the subordinate courts in AP and Telangana states in 2017 and in the last seven months, he said 95,894 new cases were filed in the High Court in 2017, and 62,047 of them were decided, while the strength of judges stood at 30/31. Another 54,686 new cases were filed this year till July 31, and 32,544 cases were decided while the strength of judges was 28/29. Besides, the judges, by having special sittings on Saturdays, have decided 104 criminal appeals of those who were in jails.
Appreciating the work of the subordinate courts, justice Radhakrishnan said that 7.23 lakh new cases (civil and criminal) were filed in 2017 and about 7.6 lakh cases were decided, reducing the number of pending cases to 37,080. This year, about 3.6 lakh new cases were filed till June 30 and as many as 3.4 lakh cases were decided.
DIGITISATION
He said the process of digitization of judicial records was taken up on war footing. The administrative wing was striving to reduce the use of paper and soft copies were being used even in relation to circulation of materials online for judges’ meetings.
All the subordinates were connected to the national judicial data grid, each court complex was provided with Internet facility to upload the case information data, and each court was also provided with Internet broadband connection.
All the court complexes were provided with video-conferencing units and the jails were now connected. Undertrial prisoners were being produced through a video-conferencing system.