Our Correspondent
Outgoing Chief Justice T S Thakur has asked the judiciary to be ready for future challenges to ensure that the nation remains an inclusive society. In his farewell address in the apex court premises, he also expressed concern over the lack of judges amid growing pendency of cases. He said, there are about three crore pending cases in courts across the country and the issue has to be tackled efficiently given the paucity of judges.
Dealing with the emerging areas of litigations, Mr Thakur said, judiciary will have very very serious issues regarding cyber laws, medico-legal cases, genetics and privacy in coming times. Mr Thakur has served for almost a year as the 43rd Chief Justice of India.
43rd Chief Justice of India, Justice Tirath Singh Thakur, retired on Tuesday. During his tenure of almost 13 months as the CJI, he pronounced 126 judgments.
Several of his Judgments are considered as milestone and they would be referred in coming years. Some of the major judgments of the outgoing CJI Includes:
– Holding that seeking vote on lines of Caste, religion, language etc, is illegal
– Issue of rising NPA of Banks
– Bringing ordinances under the purview of Judiciary.
– Steps taken to bring down the level of pollution in Delhi NCR
– Setting up Lodha Panel to reform BCCI
– Upholding the 4G-spectrum allocation to Reliance
– Hearing petitions against Demonetisation
– SEBI- Sahara controversy
Before his appointment as Cheif Justice of India , Justice Thakur had also heard many important cases like Sarda chit fund scam, NRHM Scam of UP and IPL spot fixing. Durnig his tenure as CJI, on several many occasions, Justice Thakur raised the issue of Judges’ vacancy in higher judiciary and surging pendency of cases. However, after quashing of the NJC Act, during his term, the judiciary and the government failed to finalize the collegium reforms.
Justice Thakur will be succeeded by Justice Khehar who will assume the office tomorrow. President Pranab Mukherjee had cleared the name of Justice Khehar on December 19.