Express News Service By

HYDERABAD: Noted Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Saturday vouched for the dysfunctional nature of judiciary in the country despite a string of bold decisions.

The founding member of ‘India Against Corruption,’ Bhushan, reiterated that corruption has sunk deep into the system.

While speaking at the 11th Gutta Sri Rama Rao Memorial Lecture on ‘Use of PIL in fight against corruption’ at Nalsar University of Law here on Saturday, Bhushan said that corruption has created a mafia of politicians, bureaucrats etc who are beyond any accountability.

“It is because of corruption that the kind of policies that are framed by the government are not in the public interest but in the commercial interest of corporations,” he stated.

According to the activist-politician, the role of judiciary in relation to cases pertaining to corruption ranged from adjudication to ensuring other arms of constitution like the executive and the legislature perform their duties from within their responsibilities without abuse of power. Above all, he said, it was the duty of the judiciary to pave way for systemic reforms.

“There is a crying need for judicial reforms so that cases are decided, quickly and honestly. The problem is there are incompetent judges, corruption, delays and lethargy... The SC or HC has a role to use their powers to ensure the systemic reforms in judiciary,” Bhushan said.

Further, he said, there was no accountability for judges other than impeachment which should not be the case. “My own observation is that neither the court nor the government is bothered about judicial reforms. It suits the government to have a dysfunctional judiciary,” added Bhushan.

Why is judiciary not interested in its own reforms?, he asked. “Arbitration has become a flourishing industry in the influence of political executive and the main beneficiaries are retired judges. Arbitration functions as long as regular judiciary does not deliver,” he answered to his own query stressing on the need for an independent judicial appointments commission for post-retirement jobs for judges.

Approach the courts with the specific suggestions or solutions to fix the problem, he told the graduating lawyers. Stating that he himself has had a success rate of not more than 20 per cent in all the Public Interest Litigation cases, he said: “Be optimistic and work hard. Courts work when the issue gets publicised. Public opinion and publicity plays a very important role.”