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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Indian Judicial Service and Indian Legal Service on the anvil - TOI News

The Centre is finalising creation of two new all-India services -- Indian Judicial Service (IJS) and Indian Legal Service (ILS) -- to fulfil its promise to create 15,000 additional courts by 2012 and meet the demand for services of legal professionals from various departments of the Union and state governments.

"We will create two all-India services -- IJS and ILS -- mainly aimed at capacity building at the lower levels of judiciary and to provide professional legal advice to various departments," law minister M Veerappa Moily told TOI.

Though he was tight-lipped about the timeframe of the plan, the minister said the IJS would help attract talent from all over the country for appointment at the sessions judge level.

The ministry's Vision Document prepared last year had promised creation of 15,000 posts of judges for two years to tackle the huge backlog of nearly 2.5 crore cases in the trial courts. But, with that apparently not working out, the government is keen to add to the number of nearly 17,000 existing trial court judges by creating the IJS.

Explaining the need for ILS, the law minister said there was dearth of professional legal hands in various departments of the state governments and the Centre when it comes to seeking legal opinion on various day-to-day issues.

"On complex and constitutional issues, the Centre has the Attorney General, Solicitor General and a team of additional solicitors general to seek opinion from. The states too have the advocate general and a team of legal professionals. But they being required to attend the courts daily hardly have time to give opinions on all issues on the plate of various departments. Hence, creation of an all-India legal service would fill the void," he said.

The first law commission had proposed setting up of an All India Judicial Service, but the proposal was shot down in the law ministers' meeting in 1960. The All India Services Act, 1951, was amended in 1963 to include five more services other than IAS, IFS and IPS. However, by the Constitution 44th Amendment in 1976, it was provided in Article 312 that Parliament may by law provide for creation of one or more all-India service (including an All-India Judicial Service) common to Union and states.

A decade later in 1986, the law commission by its 116th report by then chairperson D A Desai to the Centre proposed a detailed draft of an All-India Judicial Service saying "what was considered unnecessary in 1946, after a lapse of three decades became a compelling necessity. And it does not require long arguments or a detailed analysis to reach the conclusion that a service organisation on an all-India level attracting talent from whole country would provide more competent service than the service organized at state level".

It is to be seen whether after 25 years of the law commission recommendation and several departmental proposals, the Centre would be able to put in place the two new all-India services.


Read more: Govt to create two new all-India services to meet legal demand - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Govt-to-create-two-new-all-India-services-to-meet-legal-demand/articleshow/6873044.cms#ixzz14nWV5omj

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