To,
Department of Justice
Ministry of Law & Justice
Jaisalmer House, 26, Mansingh Road,
New Delhi – 110011.
INDIA
Subject: Suggestions about the collegiums system.
Respected Sir/Madam,
We are from Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), an NGO that works to create awareness in the society about issues faced by men, especially around false cases of dowry harassment, domestic violence, rape etc.
Volunteers of SIFF have often been called by various Parliamentary Standing Committees for voicing their views on upcoming bills and amendment of laws. The Law Commission of Karnataka had invited SIFF in 2009 to compile a report on misuse of Section 498A of IPC and its consequences.
In its endeavor to bring transparency in the judiciary, SIFF makes the following recommendations to the collegium system,
Eligibility Criteria:
1) Do not promote a judge who directly or indirectly promotes human rights violations for the sake of political correctness or for satisfying politically correct community or media.
2) Do not promote a judge, who delivers judgments like a political activist hell bent for affirmative action and promotes injustice of some kind or other. A judge must have impeccable integrity towards promoting justice without any regard to media, current political sentiments or affirmative action to empower some section or other of society.
3) Do not promote a judge, who has either convicted or sent to prison a man under the charges of rape just because he had sex with the woman under the false promise of marriage. Promises can be broken. Broken promise or cheating does not equate to rape.
4) Judges who are obsessed with virginity and chastity of a young woman should never be promoted. Judges who assign high value to a woman’s chastity or virginity do not deserve to be judges.
5) Judges who sleep on bail petitions and deliberately delay bail hearings or keep issuing some kind of interim bails to harass litigants must never be promoted. The habit of using the bail process as a negotiating or blackmailing tool must end.
6) Judges who deny bail to a litigant just because they personally know the complainant or they are from same village or locality of the complainant must never be promoted.
7) Judges who fail to keep themselves updated with latest developments of laws at global level and keep thinking in a tribal way must never be promoted to high courts or supreme courts.
8) Family Court judges who have not actively promoted shared parenting or father’s involvement with children must never be promoted as high court or supreme court judges. Today, men are expected to be nurturing their children since birth and it is extremely cruel on part of judges to deny these men access to their children during divorce or separation.
9) Chivalrous male judges or conservative female judges must never be promoted. Chivalry impairs a person’s judgment and this impacts delivery of justice while conservatism does not allow judges to look at things objectively and constrains them to pass orders bound by social stereotypes.
10) Judges who try to suppress a crime by discouraging a complainant (due to political correctness or chivalry etc) must never be promoted.
11) Judges who deny protection or fail to give justice to men who are assaulted by wife or her family members must never be promoted. Political correctness around gender issues and chivalry seriously undermine the process of justice and with that people’s trust on legal system gets ruined.
12) Family court and criminal court Judges who force men to tolerate domestic violence or cruelty by wives and judges who force men to stay with their abusive wives must never be promoted.
13) Judges who promote the behavior of using section 498A or other such laws as negotiation tools must never be promoted.
14) Judges who are not aware of exact statistics of various crimes, suicides, accidents as published by home ministry do not deserve to be promoted. We do not want ignorant people in judiciary hell bent of taking affirmative based on assumptions or what they learn from a biased media.
Complaints:
1) Judges, who have attempted to seek revenge on litigants who complained against any other judge, must never be promoted.
2) Judges who delivery wrong judgments harming a litigant just because of their personal animosity towards the litigant’s lawyer must never be promoted.
3) High court Judges who attempt to protect or shield any lower court judge who is deliberately subverting justice, must never be promoted.
4) High Court judges, who have not worked to clean up lower judiciary by instituting appropriate complaint mechanisms (against judges) and have not taken departmental actions on deliberately erring judges, must never be promoted to supreme court.
5) Judges who do not take suo motu cognizance of police atrocities or violence by police must never be promoted.
Transparency:
1) Judges who do not promote transparency, accountability and litigant’s rights to justice in open must never be promoted.
2) Judges who attempt to shield other corrupt, incompetent and unscrupulous judges must never be promoted.
Collegium Secretariat:
1) Uncle Judges and judges having lawyers in their families must not be appointed or promoted.
2) Judges known to have public connections with well known and high profile lawyers must not be promoted to High Courts and above.
Date: 10-Nov-15 Thanks and Regards
Place: Bangalore Save Indian Family Foundation