SC modernisation on Appu Ghar land

NEW DELHI: Swanky, yet litigant friendly, infrastructure supported to the hilt by the most modern information technology devices would come up on the land just vacated by the amusement park Appu Ghar and would serve as an extension of the present Supreme Court building on Tilak Marg. The present swarming of litigants at the filing counters of the Supreme Court awaiting their turn to register their petitions for hearing through an already loaded computer system would be a thing of past, said Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan giving The Times of India a peep into the massive modernisation plan. The plan would take shape on the 12.19 hectares of land vacated by Appu Ghar to be shared by Supreme Court and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. DMRC would set up facilities to expand the Pragati Maidan Metro station. The modernisation project would not hinder the traffic on the busy road dividing Pragati Maidan and Supreme Court. "We are planning an underground system connecting the two buildings — the main Tilak Marg building housing the courts and the other on Appu Ghar land where there would be filing counters and facilities for litigants," said Justice Balakrishnan. "There would be a rapid underground transit system connecting the two buildings of the Supreme Court. We are considering something like a monorail system," the CJI said. "There will be no queues before the filing counters. People can just walk in and register their petitions within minutes. The modern computer system would classify them into various categories telling the litigant the likely date for hearing," added Secretary General of the Supreme Court, V K Jain. If the congestion of cases and the crowd in the apex court has been a matter of concern for the apex court, visiting judges from various countries have always been startled at the volume and the number of cases handled by the judges every day. "The volume of cases could not be helped. It is because of our population," said the CJI. "The visiting judges from foreign countries always look aghast at the sight of the number of litigants and the volume of cases," he said. dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com
4 May 2008, 0446 hrs IST , Dhananjay Mahapatra , TNN
THE TIMES OF INDIA