Democracy without independent judiciary is hollow: Gauhati HC's Justice N Kotiswar Singh

Justice N Kotiswar Singh stressed the need for specialised knowledge of rules and regulations in service matters for practice in the tribunal which is uncommon in the High Court.

PTI

Updated Jul 25, 2022, 06:44 IST

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New Delhi: Democracy without an independent judiciary is hollow, said Gauhati High Court's Justice N Kotiswar Singh on Sunday. At an event to lay the foundation stone of a court-cum-office building of the Gauhati bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal, he stressed the need for specialised knowledge of rules and regulations in service matters for practice in the tribunal which is uncommon in the High Court.

Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) chairperson Manjula Das laid the foundation stone, according to a statement by the Union Personnel Ministry. Singh and K R Surana, both sitting judges, and Justice B K Sharma, a retired judge of Gauhati High Court, were also present at the function.

"Judiciary is one of the important limbs of democracy and democracy without an independent judiciary is hollow," Justice Singh, who was the chief guest of the august gathering, said. The tribunal's Guwahati bench adjudicates the service matters of not only the Central Government civilian employees in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh but also of the staffers of the notified organisations posted in this region, the Union Personnel Ministry statement said.

Since its inception, the CAT's Guwahati bench has been functioning from a rented building at Rajgarh Road. It is in a dilapidated condition and lacks basic amenities for the proper functioning of the bench, it said. Therefore, there was a constant demand from the stakeholders for the bench's own office-cum-court-complex with sufficient space and other state-of-the-art amenities. With this foundation stone-laying ceremony it will be fulfilled in the near future, the statement said.

After Das assumed charge as CAT chief on August 1 last year, the matter of transferring a suitable plot of land was vigorously taken up with the Assam government right up to the level of the chief minister. Due to his kind intervention, the plot of land was transferred in a very short time, it added.

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