New Delhi: The Supreme Court today asked
state governments and union territories to comply with its
orders for strengthening the judicial infrastructure, failing
which their Chief Secretaries will be summoned.
The apex court asked them to place before it the steps
taken for improving the infrastructure of the subordinate
judiciary and the report about various projects envisaged in
this regard.
"If our directions are not complied, we will sunmmon
the Chief Secretaries," a special Bench comprising Chief
Justice S H Kapadia and Justices Aftab Alam and Swatanter
Kumar said.
The court noted that states like Bihar, Goa, Orissa,
Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Gujarat, Nagaland,
Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand have not complied
with its July 12 order in which they were asked to file
reports in a particular format about the judicial
infrastructure.
Besides the report, these states and others like
Punjab and West Bengal have not constituted the district-level
committee, as directed by the apex court for overseeing the
judicial infrastructure.
The court wanted to know from all state governments
about the amount spent by them for augmenting judicial
infrastructure from the money generated through court fees,
costs and fine imposed in criminal cases.
The Bench, which had said it will consider reports of
each state and pass directions, today considered the status
report of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
-PTI
First Published: Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 00:50