Courts unapproachable to commoners, says VS

THRISSUR: Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan on Sunday said that the commoners are finding it difficult to approach the courts in the country as one has to shell out a good amount to run a case. Speaking at a seminar on privatisation of the Indian judicial system, held as part of the state meet of the Indian Lawyers Association in Thrissur, the opposition leader said a section of the judges succumb to external pressure. “There is something rotten in the Indian judiciary,” he said citing the Lucknow court as an example. “The Supreme Court itself had once said there were some ‘incorrigible’ judges in the Lucknow Bench,” he pointed out. The courts have also been looking at the critics with vengeance and some of its verdicts were violating the rights of the citizens, he said. The verdict in which the Supreme Court absolved Vodafone of a huge tax liability (`11,297 crore) for acquiring Indian telecom assets, is a good example of malfeasance,” he said.   He said the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) had virtually created a state of emergency at the Calicut University after the Kerala High Court stopped employees and students from agitating within 200 metres of the university buildings.The party is behaving as if the university was its inherited parental wealth, he said. The IUML had also appointed its loyalists to the key posts of the university, he added. Former minister K P Rajendran, Dr N K Jayakumar, V S Sunilkumar MLA, Rajaji Mathew Thomas, Advocate Ranjith Thampan and Advocate Saju Narayanan also spoke at the seminar.