Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said on Tuesday that an overhaul of court infrastructure is needed to make our courts accessible.
CJI Chandrachud shared that expansion of Supreme Court is on the cards, adding that 27 new courts will be added along with four registrar courts in a new building which will be made.
The expansion will happen in two phases, in the first phase - ANNEXE & MUSEUM building will be demolished to accommodate 15 courtrooms, the SCBA library, SCAORA library, Executive Meeting Rooms, Women Bar Rooms," CJI said.
In the second phase, CJI said some existing courts would be demolished to accommodate 12 more courts.
“They say sunshine is the best disinfectant, I say tech is the best tool to destroy the opacity surrounding the judicial system," CJI Chandrachud said.
CJI Chandrachud also recalled PM Modi’s Independence Day speech from Red Fort and said, “PM today mentioned in his speech from Red Fort about the initiative of the SC in translating judgments in Indian languages, I’ll elaborate and tell you that 9,423 judgments have been translated so far… 8,977 judgments in Hindi… and we have covered so far Assamese, Bengali, Garo, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odiya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu," CJI said.
He added that effort is to ensure that all the 35,000 judgments of the Supreme Court since it’s inception are available to our citizens in every language.
CJI Chandrachud also said that Supreme Court Bar Association of India (SCBA) is not a Bar for Delhi, but “a Bar for the whole nation".