CJI Sanjiv Khanna Cites Einstein, Says Judicial Woes Should Be Dealt With Renewed Vision

Referring to the issue of a large number of undertrial prisoners languishing in jails, Justice Khanna remarked that the limited judicial workforce worked wonders in delivering justice at an exceptional pace.

"In 2022, despite an influx of 18 lakh new inmates, the judiciary facilitated the release of around 15 lakh prisoners, out of which 3 lakh undertrials were released within their first year, achieving a 69% release rate," he said.

However, the CJI said that there is a need to decriminalise laws to ebb the inflow of undertrials to jails.

On the need for Judicial Impact Assessment, Justice Khanna said availability of judicial statistics in today's data-driven era presents an untapped opportunity to conduct a thorough impact assessment of laws.

"JIA is a tool to identify, modify, repeal and re-enact laws and their execution. It enables us to take corrective steps where the law is burdensome for people to follow, or where its implementation is problematic," he remarked.

Justice Khanna pointed to various instances to back the idea of the JIAs. For example, he said that the backlog of cheque-bounce cases in district courts have reached alarming proportions, with nearly 8.69% of cases pending.

He said that in an endeavour to increase early access to legal aid, the court has provided legal assistance to more than 25,000 beneficiaries at pre-arrest stage in police stations, and about 1.4 lakh at the remand stage. However, he noted that a majority of the citizens are still unaware of the existence of this right, which makes it crucial to expand the reach-out initiatives.

Quoting Albert Einstein’s famous words "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them", Justice Khanna said that to move forward, "we must rethink, reimagine, and act with a renewed vision".