New Delhi: Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar has restored the social justice bench to take up old matters relating to social issues affecting common man. The bench comprising Justices Madan B. Lokur and Uday Lalit will sit at 2 pm on every Friday and hear PILs and other related matters, including environment.
The social justice bench was set up by former CJI H.L. Dattu during his tenure and it was functioning for almost a year and it disposed of several important social justice matters. This was however discontinued by former CJI T.S. Thakur soon after he took over. Currently, such cases are heard by different benches. Now Justice Khehar has restored the bench with same composition of judges to sit every Friday.
The social justice bench will take up petitions relating to public distribution of food grains; to take steps to prevent untimely death of the women and children for want of nutritious food; providing hygienic mid-day meal besides issues relating to children; to provide night shelter to destitute and homeless; to provide medical facilities to all the citizen irrespective of their economic conditions; to provide hygienic drinking water; to provide safety and secured living conditions for the fair gender who are forced into prostitution, etc., these are some of the areas where the constitutional mechanism has to play a proactive role in order to meet the goals of the Constitution.
In Supreme Court, several cases relating to the domain of “social justice” are pending for several years.
These cases will now be given a specialised approach for their early disposal so that the masses will realise the fruits of the rights provided to them by the constitutional text.
CJI Khehar has also inserted few procedural changes. The Supreme Court from next week onwards will not observe the concept of ‘Non-Miscellaneous Days’ on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when final hearing of old matters will take place. According to the new procedure every case will be listed sequentially and there will not be any out of turn priority in listing cases.
