On August 31, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, also the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, in his keynote address, reiterated the need to strengthen trial Districts and session courts so that justice could be delivered impartially. While presiding over the inaugural session of the two-day National Conference of District Judiciary, Sibal said that these lower courts should not be considered inferior but as the pivotal regulating bodies of the judiciary.
Speaking of lower judicial officials, Sibal said they should be confident and added that they should not be questioned or have their decisions vilified. “These courts are operational in delivery of justice. They should be comfortable in knowing that their verdicts are being obeyed and that they are very germane to the legal system,” Sibal said.
Looking back to his years of practice in the legal profession, Kapil Sibal frowned at the fact that bail is rarely given at the district court level. B Joshi also remarked on this issue, saying that in his experience, it is not often that bails are granted at this level; the Chief Justice of India has also highlighted this as higher courts are usually under pressure, and bail should not be a norm at the lower court level but rather the rule. He noted individual liberty as central to democracy and cautioned the people about efforts to suppress freedom, such as a move that would compromise the quality of democracy.
The two-day national judicial conference of the Supreme Court of India was also conducted on August 31 and September 1 of the previous year, and the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has inaugurated a stamp and coin which is dedicated to the Supreme Court of India, its 75th year of establishment. Through a dissenting opinion, the current Chief Justice of India elaborated on the need to abolish the outdated practice of referring to the District Courts as “subordinate.” Baldwin mentioned that we need to cancel the subordination approach, which is a leftover from British colonial rule, to advance the legal structure and civil law.
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