Judicial System In India : All You Need to Know

An free­lance judi­cia­ry guar­an­tees the authen­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion and addi­tion­al­ly on the oppo­site hand, resolves dis­putes, con­sti­tu­tion­al or oth­er­wise, between the Union and a unit or units of the Fed­er­a­tion. In India, we’ve got such a judi­cial set­up pro­vid­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion of Asian country.

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The Indi­an judi­cia­ry could be a sin­gle uni­fied sys­tem. The Con­sti­tu­tion has pro­vid­ed for asso­ciate free­lance judi­cia­ry head­ed by the Supreme Court. Below the Supreme Courts are the High Courts and at the dis­trict lev­el the Sub­or­di­nate Courts per­form. The judi­cia­ry is that the most vital organ of the govt. as a result of it safe­guards the rights of the voters.

The Supreme Court

The mag­is­trate and there­fore the dif­fer­ent judges of the Supreme Court are appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent. (At gift, the full range of judges besides the mag­is­trate can not be over twen­ty five.)

But he does­n’t have a blank check dur­ing this mat­ter. He should con­sult the mag­is­trate of the Supreme Court before appoint­ing any choose to that. Sim­i­lar­ly, where­as appoint­ing the Chief.

Qualifications of the justice of the Supreme Court: 

The sub­se­quent qual­i­fi­ca­tion square mea­sure need­ed for some­one to become the jus­tice of the Supreme Court.

1. He ought to be a nation­al of Asian nation.
2. He ought to have worked as a choose in any of the High Courts end­less­ly for not but 5 years,
3. He ought to are Asso­ciate in Nurs­ing advo­cate of a court for a min­i­mum of ten years standing,
4. He ought to have dis­tin­guished him­self as a jurist, books on law.
5. He ought to be Asso­ciate in Nurs­ing author of illus­tri­ous books on law.

Pay and different Allowances:

The Chief Pay Jus­tice of Asian nation gets 1,00,000 as pay per month where­as dif­fer­ent judges receive 80,000 per month.

Besides, they get free and well-appoint­ed homes and a auto­mo­tive with dri­ver to attend to their offi­cial duties. They get spe­cial allowances also. Their per­son­al safe­ty is that the state responsibility.

Terms of Office:

The adju­di­ca­tor and so the var­i­ous judges of the Supreme Court unit of mea­sure­ment appoint­ed to work till they attain six­ty 5 years gone through. They are appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent, their ser­vices can­not be ter­mi­nat­ed by him. They’re going to resign from their post of their own accord when­ev­er they like. Death is anoth­er cause for the tip of their ser­vice before the age of retirement.

But if a opt for of the Supreme Court is found guilty of mis­us­ing his pow­er or of act­ing against the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion, he’s impeached and mit­i­gat­ed of his geo­graph­i­cal point. The pro­ce­dure of writ­ten doc­u­ment of a opt for is that iden­ti­cal as that of the Pres­i­dent of land.

Power and performance of The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Asian coun­try, being the best court with­in the coun­try, should per­form sev­er­al judi­cial, body, con­so­la­to­ry and dif­fer­ent functions.

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Judicial Functions

The judi­cial func­tions of the Supreme Court are both of the orig­i­nal as well as of appel­late nature.

1. Original Jurisdiction

Orig­i­nal hear cer­tain cas­es for the first time. The Supreme Court of India has orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion over cer­tain cas­es list­ed below.

1. Inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion: All cas­es, where inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion is required, can be direct­ly filed in the Supreme Court.
2. Cen­tre-State Dis­putes: All dis­putes between the cen­tre and the states fall with­in the orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion of the Supreme Court.
3. Fun­da­men­tal Rights: Cas­es relat­ing to infringe­ment, abridg­ing or deny­ing of the Fun­da­men­tal Rights guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion, can orig­i­nal­ly be brought before the Supreme Court.
4. Dis­putes between two or more states: Dis­putes between two or more states also make a case for orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion of the Supreme Court.

2. Appellate jurisdiction

The Supreme Court can also review the judge­ment of low­er courts. The cas­es that can be brought before the Supreme Court, through an appeal, form the Appel­late Juris­dic­tion of the court. They are as under:

Criminal Cases

(i) A crim­i­nal suit where a per­son is acquit­ted by the Ses­sions Court but award­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by the High Court, can be brought, on appeal, to the Supreme Court. An appeal can be made to the Supreme Court when a High Court with­draws a crim­i­nal case from a low­er court,

con­victs a per­son and awards cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (A case where a High Court itself cer­ti­fies that it involves a sub­stan­tial point of law and calls for inter­pre­ta­tion of the Constitution.

Civil Suits

Any civ­il suit where a High Court itself cer­ti­fies that a sub­stan­tial point of law is involved and inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion is required.

High Courts of India

India, at present, has 28 states and 7 union ter­ri­to­ries. The Con­sti­tu­tion of India pro­vides for one High Court for every fed­er­at­ing state in the coun­try. But, the Par­lia­ment has been giv­en the pow­er to put even more states under one High Court. It all depends on the area and the pop­u­la­tion which a High Court has to serve and the amount of work it has to han­dle. For exam­ple, there is only one High Court for the two states of Haryana and Pun­jab while the Union Ter­ri­to­ry of Del­hi has a sep­a­rate High Court.

Composition

A High Court con­sists of one Chief Jus­tice and as many oth­er judges as the Par­lia­ment may fix from time to time. Besides, the Chief Jus­tice of a High Court can call any judge from the Sub­or­di­nate Courts to serve in the High Court tem­porar­i­ly if the load of work so demands. A tem­po­rary judge appoint­ed for a peri­od of not more than two years and can­not hold office after the age can be of 62.

Qualifications for the Chief Justice of the High Court:

The Chief Jus­tice, as well as oth­er Judges, of the High Court must pos­sess the fol­low­ing qualifications:

(i) He should be a cit­i­zen of India.

(ii) He should have worked as a judge in any court in India for not less than ten years,

or, He should have worked as an advo­cate in the High Court or High Courts in India con­tin­u­ous­ly for ten years,

or, He should be a renowned writer in the field of law,

or, He should have been a rec­og­nized teacher of good rep­u­ta­tion in a Law College.

Appointment and Tenure

The Chief Jus­tice of a High Court in India is appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent in con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Jus­tice of the Supreme Court and the Gov­er­nor of the State con­cerned. The oth­er judges of the High Court are appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent after duly con­sult­ing the Chief Jus­tice of the con­cerned High Court.

The Chief Jus­tice and the judges of the High Courts serve till they reach 62 years of age. They can­not be removed from ser­vice unless they are impeached accord­ing to the pro­ce­dure laid down for the impeach­ment of the Pres­i­dent and the Judges of the Supreme Court, for offences already list­ed above.

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Pay and Allowances:

The Chief Jus­tice of a High Court gets 90,000 per month while the oth­er judges get 80,000 a month, plus hand­some allowances fixed by the Par­lia­ment from time to time. They also get free and fur­nished hous­es with all the facil­i­ties at gov­ern­ment expense. As it has been already men­tioned, their pay and allowances can­not be changed dur­ing their service.

Functions and Duties:

Like the Supreme Court of India, a High Court has to per­form many func­tions and duties of judi­cial and non judi­cial nature. Some impor­tant func­tions of the High Courts are list­ed below.

Original Jurisdiction

The orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion of the High Court is very lim­it­ed. Cas­es relat­ing to Fun­da­men­tal Rights, divorce, wills and laws relat­ing to mar­riage can be brought direct­ly to a High Court. The High Courts of the three pres­i­den­cy towns of Mum­bai, Chen­nai and Kolkata, how­ev­er, pos­sess an orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion over cas­es aris­ing with­in their presidency.

Appellate Jurisdiction:

All the deci­sions made by the Sub­or­di­nate Courts in all types of civ­il as well as crim­i­nal mat­ters can be brought to the High Courts by an appeal. Only those civ­il cas­es which are decid­ed by the pet­ty courts under the juris­dic­tion of the High Court con­cerned can be brought to the High Court or any oth­er court by an appeal.

Subordinate Courts

The courts at the dis­trict lev­el, and below it ar referred to as Sub­or­di­nate Courts. There ar com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent courts in every dis­trict to make your mind up the civ­il and crim­i­nal cas­es. the very best civ­il court in a very dis­trict is that of the dis­trict decide. Cas­es involv­ing over five hun­dred return for hear­ing to the Dis­trict decide. He addi­tion­al­ly hears appeals against the choic­es of the low­er courts. The civ­il cas­es of less­er amounts ar set by the sub-judges, mun­sifs and junior magistrates.

The high­est court in a very dis­trict is that of the Ses­sions decide. Gen­er­al­ly, the Dis­trict decide addi­tion­al­ly works because the Ses­sions decide. Cas­es of mur­der, dacoity, etc., ar detect­ed by the Ses­sions decide. He will award death penal­ty sub­ject to the approval of the judicature.

Appeals against the choic­es of the low­er courts ar detect­ed by the dis­trict courts where­as appeals against the choic­es of the dis­trict courts ar detect­ed by the judi­ca­ture of that indi­vid­ual State.

The judges and mag­is­trates of the sub­or­di­nate courts ar appoint­ed by the Gov­er­nor of the State from the State Judi­cial Ser­vices as sug­gest­ed by the State Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Their pay and allowances ar set by the state involved from time to time.

Lok Adalats in India

The main draw­back of our judi­cial sys­tem is that it usu­al­ly takes a long time to reach a judge­ment. To save both time and mon­ey, a sys­tem of Lok Adalats has been set up recent­ly in our coun­try. Under this sys­tem, a large num­ber of cas­es are decid­ed in a sin­gle day. The first such Lok Adalat, which was held in Del­hi in 1985, decid­ed as many as 150 cas­es in a sin­gle day.

The sys­tem of Lok Adalats is becom­ing pop­u­lar in our coun­try. These Lok Adalats have proved use­ful not only for the poor and the down­trod­den but they have light­ened the bur­den of oth­er courts also. The speed with which they con­duct their busi­ness has giv­en much relief to the com­mon man. They elim­i­nate delay and speed up clear­ance of the pend­ing cases.

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Types of Judicial Cases

Broad­ly speak­ing there are two types of judi­cial cas­es civ­il and crim­i­nal. Dis­tinc­tion between Civ­il and Crim­i­nal Cas­es: There are some dis­tinc­tions between the civ­il cas­es and the crim­i­nal cases.

1. Cas­es that are con­cerned with pri­vate rights are called civ­il cas­es while cas­es that deal with wrongs done against the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole are called crim­i­nal cases.
2. A few cas­es that attract civ­il action include tres­pass, neg­li­gence, break of con­tract, mat­ri­mo­ni­al caus­es, etc., while cas­es of seri­ous nature like that of mur­der, crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, cheat­ing, food adul­ter­ation, etc., attract crim­i­nal action.
3. The reme­dies and pro­ce­dure for civ­il and crim­i­nal cas­es are quite different.
4. The reme­dies for civ­il wrongs include claim for com­pen­sa­tion or spe­cif­ic per­for­mance or injunc­tion and such oth­er reme­dies, while the reme­dies in crim­i­nal cas­es include award­ing pun­ish­ment to the guilty and to com­pen­sate the vic­tim for his/her griev­ance under spe­cif­ic circumstances. 
5. Many civ­il cas­es are set­tled out of court by the par­ties but such is not the case with the crim­i­nal cas­es because there the state is also involved.

Dif­fer­ence Between the Role of the Courts and the Police Though both the orga­ni­za­tions- the courts and the police are to pro­vide jus­tice to the peo­ple, yet there are many dif­fer­ences in their role.

Role of the Courts

Courts give judge­ment once a detailed exam­i­na­tion of the case. If any­body facet isn’t glad, then it will choose asso­ciate degree charm to the upper courts, from the Dis­trict Courts to the High Courts and from the High Courts to the Supreme Court. dur­ing this approach, the var­i­ous courts strive their best to try to to jus­tice to each the parties.

Over and on top of decid­ing cas­es between the indi­vid­ual par­ties, the courts play a sig­nif­i­cant role with­in the body set­up of the country.

1. They act because the stew­ard of the Constitution.
2. They defend the basic Rights of the voters.
3. They keep a check on the uncurbed pow­er of the leg­isla­tives and exec­u­tives. they’ll declare sure Jaws rad­i­cal and unconstitutional.
4. They decide the cen­tre-state dis­putes or dis­putes aris­ing between 2 or a lot of states.
5. They advise the Pres­i­dent or the gov­er­nors on mat­ters of law.

Role of the Public Prosecutor

Pub­lic pros­e­cu­tors are gazetted offi­cers who are appoint­ed by the state to help in the pros­e­cu­tion of offend­ers to keep the soci­ety free from crimes. Their offices are sit­u­at­ed in the respec­tive court buildings.

The present crim­i­nal sys­tem is based on the prin­ci­ple that any crime com­mit­ted by an indi­vid­ual is a crime against the soci­ety. The pros­e­cu­tion and pun­ish­ment of the crime is there­fore the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the state and not that of the vic­tim of the crime above. Such pros­e­cu­tion on behalf of the state (or the soci­ety) is per­formed by a pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor appoint­ed by the state.

The pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor is required to play an impar­tial and neu­tral role and help in the pros­e­cu­tion of all per­sons who have been charge sheet­ed by the police. How­ev­er, it is quite a dif­fi­cult task because he faces tremen­dous pres­sure not only from the gov­ern­ment side, but also from the pow­er­ful elites who make an attempt to influ­ence the pros­e­cu­tion. Pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor holds an important

In con­clu­sion, we can say that it is desir­able that police per­son­nel togeth­er with oth­er relat­ed sys­tems of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem make seri­ous efforts in the direc­tion of main­tain­ing law and order and serv­ing the peo­ple. The state should ini­ti­ate efforts to update the Police Act to uphold demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and cul­ture and equip the orga­ni­za­tion with the lat­est sophis­ti­cat­ed gadgets.

The pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor is required to play an impar­tial and neu­tral role and help in the pros­e­cu­tion of all per­sons who have been charge sheet­ed by the police. How­ev­er, it is quite a dif­fi­cult task because he faces tremen­dous pres­sure not only from the gov­ern­ment side, but also from the pow­er­ful elites who make an attempt to influ­ence the prosecution.

The pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor holds an impor­tant place and a num­ber of court judg­ments have called him a ‘min­is­ter of jus­tice’. He is expect­ed to place before the court all evi­dences in his pos­ses­sion, whether in favour of or against the accused and to leave it to the court to decide upon all such evi­dences whether the accused had or had not com­mit­ted the offence for which he was charged.

Role of the Police

The police also play a vital role in the admin­is­tra­tive func­tions. Under the colo­nial rule its main func­tions were enforce­ment of laws and main­te­nance of order, and inves­ti­ga­tion of crime, deten­tion of crim­i­nals, arrest, col­lec­tion of evi­dence and get­ting con­vic­tion. These func­tions of the police are called tra­di­tion­al func­tions. But with the dawn of inde­pen­dence and devel­op­ment of democ­ra­cy in India the whole con­cept of police func­tions has great­ly changed. Now, the police has to do many wel­fare func­tions. They include show­ing gen­er­al spir­it of ser­vice to the peo­ple spe­cial­ly of weak­er sec­tions, women and chil­dren, hand­i­capped, serv­ing the peo­ple in nat­ur­al calami­ties and func­tion­ing as per rule of law and due process of law. How, and whether our police sys­tem can suc­cess­ful­ly achieve all these val­ues in the larg­er con­text of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem demands a seri­ous review,

Many law experts have sug­gest­ed dif­fer­ent norms to enhance the effi­cien­cy of the police. The chief among them are, how­ev­er, the following:

1. Whether a sense of secu­ri­ty pre­vails in the society.
2. Whether peo­ple are will­ing to coop­er­ate and par­tic­i­pate in the pro­grammes meant for the pre­ven­tion of crime.
3. Whether law and order is being main­tained with peo­ple’s cooperation.
4. Whether there is a feel­ing of ser­vice in police per­son­nel towards chil­dren and hand­i­capped. women,
5. Whether police ren­ders ser­vice to the peo­ple dur­ing nat­ur­al calamities.
6. Last but not the least, whether the police reg­is­ters an FIR prompt­ly and an offi­cer vis­its the scene of the inci­dent and con­ducts prop­er investigation.

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First Information Report (FIR)

First Infor­ma­tion Report or FIR plays an impor­tant role for the one who seeks the help of police.

It is a report of infor­ma­tion that reach­es the police first in point of time and that is why it is called the FIR.

The first infor­ma­tion report or FIR is very impor­tant because it doc­u­ments the reports of the vic­tim or wit­ness­es. The FIR has to be filed at the police sta­tion in whose juris­dic­tion the offence has been com­mit­ted. The per­son fil­ing the FIR has to nar­rate the events cor­rect­ly. Incor­rect doc­u­men­ta­tion of FIR can change the entire case or weak­en the case. It is for this rea­son that the Supreme Court issued cer­tain direc­tives regard­ing FIR. Some of these are:

1. The police per­son­nel car­ry­ing out the arrest should bear clear iden­ti­fi­ca­tion name tags with designation.
2. The per­son arrest­ed should be enti­tled to have a friend, rel­a­tive or any oth­er per­son known to him/her to be informed.
3. The police must noti­fy the place and venue of the arrest.
4. Copies of all arrest doc­u­ments regard­ing the arrest must be sent to the Mag­is­trate concerned.
5. The detained per­son must per­mit­ted to meet his/her lawyer. Be Supreme Court’s Direc­tive on not Accept­ing FIR by the Police

The Supreme Court has held that police can­not refuse to reg­is­ter a first infor­ma­tion report or for­mal com­plaints sim­ply on the basis of doubts of cred­i­bil­i­ty or gen­uine­ness of a com­plaint received.