“Toothless and dysfunctional.” CJI's warning for Indian courts

Brut India

There are 2,000 bail applications pending at the Supreme Court because district court judges are scared of granting bail... New CJI Chandrachud explains why.

Transcript

00:00There is a sense of fear, that if I grant bail, will somebody target me tomorrow on

00:07the ground that I granted bail in a heinous case?

00:11We are going to render our district courts toothless and our higher courts dysfunctional.

00:41We are going to render our district courts toothless and our higher courts dysfunctional.

01:12The higher courts are getting flooded with bail applications.

01:21I have just taken a decision as Chief Justice of India that there are 2,000 bail applications

01:26pending in the Supreme Court, 3,000 transfer petitions pending in the Supreme Court, 5,000

01:31out of the total pendency.

01:33So, we decided at the full court meeting the other day that all benches of the Supreme

01:37Court will take 10 bail applications every single day.

01:41The idea being that we have 13 benches today.

01:44So, 130 bail applications will be disposed of, 650 at the end of one week.

01:49Hopefully, at the end of four weeks, of course, there will be fresh bail applications.

01:54But this turnover has to constantly be maintained of matters which are filed and matters which

02:00are disposed of.

02:02But the reason why the higher judiciary is getting flooded with bail applications is

02:07because of the reluctance of the grassroots to grant bail.

02:12And why are judges at the grassroots reluctant to grant bail?

02:16Not because they don't have the ability.

02:19Not because the judges at the grassroots don't understand the crime.

02:23They probably understand the crime better than many of the higher court judges because

02:27they know what crime is at the grassroots in the districts.

02:31But there is a sense of fear that if I grant bail, will somebody target me tomorrow on

02:38the ground that I granted bail in a heinous case?

02:47This sense of fear, nobody talks about, but which we must confront.

02:54Because unless we do that, we are going to render our district courts toothless and our

03:01higher courts dysfunctional.

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