Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, who will succeed CJI N V Ramana as the next chief justice of India, spoke about a range of issues pertaining to the lower courts, clubbing of cases, and the retirement age of judges, among others, in interviews to NDTV and The Indian Express on Monday, 15 August.
On his vision of "maximum output through the limited resources" during a term that is set to last for 74 days, Justice Lalit said that it can be achieved by clubbing cases and listing matters that can be representative in other cases "which are capable of disposing of many pending matters in the lower authorities," NDTV quoted him as saying.
Speaking about the lower courts' recent verdicts on bail matters, Justice Lalit said:
"Let’s put it this way, 90 percent of our prison population is actually undertrials. There are various statutes, for instance, POCSO, Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Act or NDPS law which have an in-built mandate that bail should not easily be granted, should not readily be granted, unless certain statutory requirements are satisfied. When the matter is still at the undertrial stage, the idea is not yet crystallised because many of these provisions say that (for bail) the court (needs to be) prima facie satisfied that no offence is made out. And that puts a lot of burden on the entire system."Justice U U Lalit to The Indian Express