New Delhi: Newly appointed Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud spoke about the elevation of Supreme Court advocates as High Court judges Monday. The CJI was speaking at the felicitation ceremony organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) in his honour.
“I can let out a secret, when a young lawyer appears before us, the instinct that we have as judges who have come from High Court is to think, ‘Is this person not good enough to be appointed as the judge of the High Court? And I have a list of lawyers in my mind. I believe all my colleagues also have lists and I have been mentioning those names constantly to the Chief Justices who have preceded me,” he said.
Chandrachud spoke about making listing transparent and objective and advocated for the use of technology to remove any human bias.
The CJI highlighted the problems in the district judiciary. He said a woman district judge at Kolhapur district court told him that there is no toilet for women in this establishment.
“They leave their home at 8.30 in the morning to come to the court and they return home and can use the washroom only at 6 in the evening. And the district judges told us, well, they don’t go past the public toilet because they have to go past the undertrials who are sitting just outside the toilet, and they find it extremely embarrassing to use the public toilet,” he said.
He added that he believes the face of district judiciary must be changed, “first and foremost”.
ThePrint’s national photo editor Praveen Jain covered the felicitation ceremony of CJI at the top court’s auditorium.
