SC sets up Social Justice Bench

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The purpose

* The special Bench will handle PILs on food, health, water, women security

* The Bench will have its first sitting on December 12 and would hold hearings every working Friday at 2 pm

* All pending cases falling under social justice would be transferred to this Bench, which would also hear fresh cases that would be filed on the subject.

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, December 3

Chief Justice of India (CJI) HL Dattu today set up a “Social Justice Bench” in the Supreme Court for expeditious disposal of PILs pleading for basic necessities such as food, drinking water, healthcare and night shelter to poor people.

The new Bench would comprise Justices Madan B Lokur and Uday U Lalit and have its first sitting on December 12. It would hold hearings every working Friday at 2 pm.

All pending cases falling under social justice would be transferred to this Bench, which would also hear fresh cases that would be filed on the subject.

The other matters that would be handled by this Bench include prevention of malnutrition among children and women, provision of hygienic food under the mid-day meal scheme in schools, availability of safe drinking water, ensuring safe and secure living condition for women pushed into prostitution.

“These are some of the areas where the constitutional mechanism has to play a proactive role in order to meet the goals of the Constitution,” an official of the SC said, pointing out that the Preamble of the Constitution “has assured the people a three-dimensional justice including social justice.”

Acknowledging that several cases pertaining to social justice were pending in the SC for several years, the CJI had said these would now be “given a specialised approach for their early disposal so that the masses will realise the fruits of the rights provided to them by the constitutional text.”

Securing social justice was “one of the ideals of the Indian Constitution,” the official noted. The SC Bench would also go into the need for distributing some of the surplus food grains procured by the government to poor people living in drought-hit areas and framing of a fresh scheme for public distribution of food grains. It would consider steps required for checking deaths arising from malnutrition among women and children and offering medical facilities to all citizens irrespective of their economic condition.

The SC already has a special Bench to expedite disposal of criminal cases pending for long and a Green Bench to approve development projects in forest areas.