Reduce area of functions of the Supreme Court so that it can carry out its real role: K K Venugopal

Senior advocate K K Venugopal has said that the Supreme Court is not performing the role of an apex court. He said that the Court hears land acquisition cases, labour cases, a large number of rent control cases and very ordinary cases, where the judge believes that there has been an error of law or even of fact. "It is not the function of the apex court of a country to deal with cases other than constitutional issues, federal issues, validity of laws, substantial questions of law which affect the nation as a whole and the special jurisdictions with respect to disputes between the Centre and the states and those between states", he said.

"You find rent control cases where the plan of a house is handed over to the judge to explain that the landlord does not have enough space for his own comforts. You also find bitterly-fought matrimonial cases that take hours. This is not the true function of the apex court of the country, and that is how the total arrears have gone up drastically in the last few years."

He said that the solution did not lie in cases being settled finally at the high courts. "Frankly, I am not quite happy about the judgments delivered by the High Courts, where there are cases which require interference by the higher courts."

He said that he found a lot of high court judgments where important questions have not decided and binding judgments had been ignored. "There should be another tier of courts which will deal with high court judgments that require interference. However, the Supreme Court is not that court."

"It would be in the interests of the justice delivery system to have courts of appeal. One court of appeal is not enough. There should be four - one in each of the regions." The chartered high courts have enough space to accommodate these courts of appeal, he said.

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News & Politics

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• K K Venugopal
• Supreme Court
• delivery of justice
• pendency
• courts of appeal

[DrKsongs]

Indian jurisprudence is a charade of proforma petitions and proforma judgments - ground reality is

the casualty. Every petition is a driving competition where outcome is the balance of relative skill of

drivers. A criminal case is complainant v/s all - the judge, the public prosecutor, the defense lawyer -

all sharing reward from the accused released.