What is the issue?
- The proposal to create an All-India Judicial Service (AIJS) is a long debated one.
- It has again come to the fore with a fresh move to implement it. However opposition is also getting stronger.
What is the proposal?
- The idea was first mooted by the Law Commission in the 1950s to have an AIJS.
- Under this the district judges will be recruited centrally through an all-India examination.
- They will then be allocated to each State along the lines of the AIS.
- This is expected to ensure a transparent and efficient method of recruitment to attract the best talent in India’s legal profession.
What are the human resource problems in judiciary?
- The standard of legal education across the country except for a few law schools is not improved or updated for a long time.
- Unremunerative pay - Despite effort by the Supreme Court to ensure uniformity in pay scales across States in the All India Judges’ Association case, it is still very low.
- Also, judiciary have fewer avenues for growth, promotion and limited avenues for career advancement.
- There is low district judge representation in the High Courts, as less than a third of seats in the High Courts are filled by judges from the district cadre. The rest are appointed directly from the Bar.
Can AIJS address these?
- The idea of an AIJS is opposed mainly because it seems to lack basic understanding of the above problems with judiciary.
- A national exam is said to be disadvantageous to the less privileged candidates from being able to enter the judicial services.
- Taking into account local laws, practices and customs which vary widely across States and even training judges in this line would be a problem.
- The decentralised approach of the High Court and a centralised one of the AIS seem to have same low efficacy in filling up the vacancy.
What is to be done?
- A combination of delays, cost, uncertainty, inefficiency and corruption are among the problems of judiciary.
- These problems are less to be solved by centralising the manner of recruitment of judges.
- Focussing attention on implementing more direct solutions to address these problems would be wise.
Source: The Hindu