Blitz Bureau
CHIEF Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud has said that increasing number of women have been joining the district judiciary in the past few years, with Kerala leading the pack with 72 per cent of judges being women.
Speaking at the inaugural function of National Conference of the District Judiciary, he said,”Women consisted of 58 pc of the total recruitment for Civil Judges in Rajasthan in 2023. 66 pc of the judicial officers appointed in Delhi in 2023 were women. In Uttar Pradesh, 54 pc of the appointments for Civil Judge (Junior Division) in the batch of 2022 were women. In Kerala, 72 pc of the total number of judicial officers are women.” He called it a picture of a promising judiciary of the future, reports Bar and Bench.
He said the district judiciary was often the final point of contact a litigant has with the law and not just the first contact.
“The reasons may be numerous – many citizens are unable to afford legal representation, they have a lack of awareness about statutory rights, and there are geographical difficulties in physically accessing courts. 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,” CJI said.
He added that the district judiciary was called upon to shoulder a tremendous responsibility and is aptly described as the ‘backbone of the judiciary’. In this context, he stressed that district courts should not be called subordinate judiciary.
He highlighted various other functions of the district judiciary and said the district judges, like judges at the high courts and the Supreme Court, play a meaningful role in their interactions with members of the bar.
