The New Nation - Internet Edition

K.M Mukta

Judiciary is one of the indispensable organs of an independent sovereign nation state. The judiciary is viewed as the last resort of justice from time immemorial from pole to pole. In the first decade of 19th century the U.S Supreme Court launched the classical dogma of 'Judicial Review' in Murbury vs. Madison 1804 to uphold the constitutional rights and to perish the arrogance of the executive organ. In the Constitution of Bangladesh, we discover, preamble, Articles 7, 26, 102, etc. explicitly enshrined the provisions of judicial hegemony as watchdog to uphold constitution and rights of all the strata including the downtrodden minority nationals and other vulnerable groups. But ironically the judiciary was caused to sink for multi-dimensional causes like corruption, naked encroachment by the executive, muscle power, bureaucracy, colonial legacy, backdated laws, lack of intellectual human resource in the Bar and Bench, lack of logistic support, etc. which Justice lyer inducted by four pathological factors-(a) Colonial judicial backwardness, (b) medieval management methods promotive of docket and stagnation, (c) functional non-accountability to the people, and (d) a careerist hedonism ready to negotiate judicial independence. As a result, there are many corners which whispered "the court is dead .Rest in peace!"

Outline of renaissance in Judiciary:

Within that dark gamut of judiciary, we mark a miraculous holistic and comprehensive pronouncement by the Supreme Court in Masdar Hossain case which echoed separation and independence of judiciary by letters and in spirit that is a constitutional guarantee. In pursuance of 12 point directives of Masdar Hossain case, there is a formal and official separation of judiciary on 01/11/2007. This historical and epoch making neo journey of judiciary is a partial renaissance for the whole nation with the oath of qualitative and quantitative justice.

But the question is whether we have minimum preparation to congratulate and retain the prolific of this renaissance in judiciary. Intellectuality is the very basic edifice of sustainability of any renaissance as it is axiomatically inferred from the saga of various renaissance and human civilisation. The judicial service commission has already appointed 396 assistant judges who are comparatively young, determined, committed and intellectual with brilliant academic results. These young pusine judges just achieved their graduate or postgraduate on jurisprudence.

There are multifaceted options of lucrative professional opportunities for them. At the time of appointment all of them heard the promise of the concerned to ameliorate the salary and other logistic support in accordance with the financial crisis of inflation and soaring prices of daily commodities. But those were the fake and murky promises as the judicial service pay commission's recommendations to enhance the salary of the judges are turned down by the government and begets another bad precedent where all over the world we envisage the high degree of respect towards the apex court's recommendations. In these milieus, the newly appointed judges who are the active force of sustainability of the judicial renaissance are in hilly frustration as the poet stated 'Khuder Rajya Pridivi Ghadyamoy.' If a judge can not afford minimum basic emolument for his family, it is neither possible nor desirable to materialise the dreams of the renaissance of the judiciary. Meantime some of the newly appointed assist judges are stated to quit and many others are pondering over to quit for better options.

Problems in lower Judiciary:

The colossal impediments of lower judiciary are highly visual and interwoven. It is a highly indecent for the state and wisdom would not support that the judicial officers and their family members would suffer from malnutrition. The whole nation has expectation upto to the sky from the judiciary without basic investment as statistics demonstrate the national budget never allocates more than Taka 200 crore for the judiciary which is a remarkable revenue earning sector for Bangladesh.

In the District level courts, there is no minimum opportunities of enriched library, modern information technology, residence and other ancillary opportunities in contrasting with South Asian countries like, India,Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka where judicial officers are endowed with higher degree of opportunities culminated in feeding back of seeming justice to the citizens. There is no scope of intellectual development as the judicial officers cannot publish any articles, research papers unless and until pursuance of complex bureaucratic manoeuver of consent from the authority. There are a few numbers of judicial officers who have PhD degree in comparison with other cadre service as the judicial officers do not have the access to various scholarships of foreign government/ agencies which are now destined to the BCS officers.

This has already created and will enlarge the intellectual barenness in the realm of judiciary. There is a great frustration as per the rank and protocol whereof a judicial officer at the end of his service retired as District Judge but with the same/ less calibre his friends/ classmate retired as secretary. There is a mammoth communication gap between the Bar and the Bench where there is no formal and informal steps to minimise the miss understandings. The new comer judges do not have any training but they are functioning as plenipotentiary judge which might create further bitterness and resulted in substantial distrust towards the whole institution.

The training opportunity accommodated by JATI is embedded with multidimensional lacunae including selection of qualified trainer. Intra and inter judicial conflict and discrimination, as for instance, assistant judges enjoy one month vacation which is not available to the judicial magistrates though all of them entered into the service as assistant judge. The lower judiciary is left like an orphan as if there is no stakeholder/ platform to negotiate for them. Actually, there is a gulf of communication gap between the lower and higher judiciary on the various issues regarding service where lower judiciary is like a skylark without any say.

Recommendations:

Finally, if the real flavour of independence and separation of judiciary is to anchor to the fates of commonalty proper logistic support should be available to the judges. There should be reshuffling of the status through amendment of the present 'warrant of precedent' system. The proloned meagre tradition of isolation of judicial officers should be eliminated with self sanction of judgeship, ethics and morality. The horizontal and vertical avenue of higher education, various training, scholarship, intellectual publications, participation in workshop, seminar etc. should be ventilated for the judicial officers.

There should be a paradigm shift for prognosis from bugaboo of lackadaisical vapoury of meaningless prohibitions, as for example, 'maintain the veil like a new bride', etc. which ultimately ostracized judicial officers from mainstream and hinders judicial activism. After all, Patriotism, self sanction and accountability of the judicial officers to the citizens are condition precedent to retain the prolific of renaissance of the judiciary. Higher degree of value system should be invented through the combined endeavours of the decision makers of the higher judiciary where the lower judiciary should be consulted as a matter of right.