District Judiciary Is The ‘Backbone’, Not A Subordinate One, Says CJI DY Chandrachud

NEW DELHI: The Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Saturday said that the district judiciary was called upon to shoulder tremendous responsibility and is aptly described as the 'backbone of the judiciary' and we must stop calling the district judiciary as the subordinate judiciary.

He said the district judiciary is the first point of contact for a citizen in search of justice and is a crucial component of the rule of law.

CJI was speaking at the inaugural function of the National Conference of the District Judiciary. The event was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, Supreme Court judges and other judicial officers.

"The quality of our work and the conditions in which we provide justice to citizens determines whether they have confidence in us and is a test of our own accountability to society. The district judiciary is therefore called upon to shoulder tremendous responsibility and is aptly described as the 'backbone of the judiciary'. The spine is the core of the nervous  system. To sustain the spine of the legal system, we must stop calling the district judiciary as the subordinate judiciary. Seventy-five years after Independence, the time has come for us to bury one more relic of the British era - the colonial mindset of subordination," said the CJI.

CJI also underlined how judicial officers dealing with a variety of cases and the emotional baggage of the parties need to balance their professional work with mental well-being too.

"It is difficult for a judge not to be affected by the actual face of suffering that each of us encounters every day - a family which is coming face to face with a gruesome crime, an undertrial who is languishing for years or the children in a parental matrimonial dispute. Judges are despite being professionals, affected by their own brush with reality. Their mental health may suffer as a consequence. This aspect is of great consequence but it unfortunately does not receive the attention that it merits," added CJI Chandrachud.

He further said that there has been an increase in the number of women joining the district judiciary in the past few years and Kerala leading the pack with 72 per cent of judges being women.

Women consisted of 58 per cent of the total recruitment for Civil Judges in Rajasthan in 2023 and 66 per cent of the judicial officers appointed in Delhi in 2023 were women, said the CJI.

He further added, "In Uttar Pradesh, 54 per cent of the appointments for Civil Judge (Junior Division) in the batch of 2022 were women. In Kerala, 72 per cent of the total number of judicial officers are women. These are a few examples which paint the picture of a promising judiciary of the future."

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