Hyderabad: Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu said that in a developing country like India, lawyers and jurists have to play a crucial role in ensuring that nobody is denied access to justice and the poor and illiterate in particular are not deprived of their rights. Addressing judges and lawyers here in the Hyderabad High Court, he said lawyers should act as conscience-keepers of society and take advantage of the mechanisms like Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to serve the needy and the poor.
The High Court Advocates Associations of AP and Telangana state felicitated Mr Naidu. Recalling his association with the legal fraternity before and after completing his law degree from Andhra University, he said “Though I had enrolled here as an advocate a long time ago, I didn’t get an opportunity to be in the legal profession for long.”
Mr Naidu said, “My mother wanted me to become a good lawyer. But thanks to Mrs Indira Gandhi I became a politician. If I was not jailed during Emergency I would been continued in the legal profession.” Stating that the Indian judiciary had always remained independent and played a stellar role in strengthening democracy, he said the World Justice Report ranked India at 66 position in its Rule of Index 2016 and Denmark, Norway and Finland were the top three countries.
He opined that India had vast scope to improve its ranking and said a concerted effort was needed by all the stakeholders. Maintaining that the huge backlog of cases was partly because of vacancies, the Vice-President said there were complaints that lawyers tended to delay the disposal of cases. This should be avoided to restore people’s trust in the system.
Lawyers striking work was one of the reasons for the delay, he said. “Lawyers may not strike work, for it affects the rights of the litigants,” Mr Naidu said.
He said every lawyer should do public service by accepting cases of poor litigants pro bono and render free legal aid. Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, Deputy Chief Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali, judges of the High Court, advocates general of both Telugu states were present.
