BY LAWZ BUREAU.
G.L. SANGHI, SENIOR ADVOCATE, SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
“If a judge is patient he will be able to deliver justice.”
He started his career in law by practising in Nagpur District Courts. Although he belonged to a lawyer’s family, he started his career afresh with Mr. Bobde, a practising lawyer in Nagpur. In the year 1965, G.L. Sanghi came to Delhi to practise in the Supreme Court. He was never inclined to become an Advocate-on-Record, but always wanted to be an Arguing Counsel. With the passage of time and with hard and honest effort, work started flowing and G.L. Sanghi became as busy as any other top lawyer of the Supreme Court at that time. Soon he was able to establish a name for himself and was later designated a Senior Counsel. He was also offered judgeship but he never wanted to become a Judge and declined the offer.
In an exclusive interview, G.L. Sanghi, who was one of the senior-most and respected members of the Bar, speaks to our correspondent Renu Sharma.
What moved you to enter the legal profession?
I belong to Maharashtra and Nagpur is my home town, therefore my education has been mostly in Nagpur. I did my B.A. and M.A. in Political Science. After I passed my M.A. in 1956, I joined as a lecturer in Political Science in a degree college in Nagpur. What moved me to enter the legal profession was my family background. I belong to a family of lawyers. My father, who is now 97 years old, is also a lawyer who had a good practice at that time.
Ever since my childhood I never thought of doing anything else, apart from law. After I completed my M.A. in Political Science, I joined law and after completing my degree in law, started my practice. At that time, there was a requirement of two years of practice as a pleader before one could be enrolled as an advocate. I started my practice after I passed law and from day one, I felt no hesitation in myself while addressing the court. It is the career of my choice and I thank God that I chose law as my professional career.
Did you face any difficulties during the early years of your career? How did you overcome those difficulties?
Since I belonged to a lawyer’s family I was very aware of the things in the legal profession and as such did not face much difficulty. I started my career with one Mr. Bobde, in Nagpur. Although Mr. Bobde was only 8-10 years older than me, I will always consider him as an excellent senior, for the work which I learnt from him as his junior.
The first case which I did was a criminal case, where I appeared for a very poor girl who was being harassed by her husband. I did not charge any fee for the said case, but it was a good learning experience.
From the very beginning I was very short tempered and quite often used to enter into arguments with the judge. Once a judge in the court, in presence of my client, commented that I did not know the law on the point I was arguing. I replied to the judge and said that his job was to listen to me and decide the case and not to comment on my knowledge of law. There are many incidents like this when I lost my temper during the early days of my profession. But later, when I matured in the profession, I realised that it was no good losing my temper before a judge, as they are the ones before whom you have to practice every day.
I got good breaks and chances to argue cases because of Mr. Bobde. I never faced much difficulty in my early days. In 1964 I decided to come to Delhi to practise in the Supreme Court. Since January, 1965 I had been practising in the Supreme Court. I used to get regular briefs from Nagpur and also from Delhi, from Dadachandji. I drafted and argued my own cases and slowly developed my practice.
Are you satisfied with the recent amendments to the CPC?
According to me, the said recent amendments to the C.P.C. are basically aimed towards the speedy disposal of cases, which is good. But in some parts, it appears to be impractical. I think some amendments need rectification which, unfortunately, the Bar Associations have not bothered to look into. These amendments were brought out as early as in 1999. We must see the amendments as a whole and must try to remove those amendments which are impractical.
Any suggestions to improve the working structure of our judicial system?
In my view, what is presently required is improving the quality of Judges. We must appoint better and more experienced persons as Judges. In fact, we must have a separate kind of education for those who wish to go to judicial service. The infrastructure provided to the Judges is not adequate and many times even a good Judge finds himself unable to deliver to the extent of his capacity due to the lack of proper infrastructure.
We must have good Judges who have patience and good listening power. Only if a judge is patient will he be able to deliver justice. We, of course, have good judges in the Supreme Court, the High Court and also in subordinate courts who have been giving excellent service and contributions to our judicial system. We need more of these kinds of judges, which will definitely improve the quality of justice.
Are you satisfied with the present judge strength of our judicial system or do you think that more judges are needed?
If you see the ratio between the number of judges and the pending cases, then of course I must say that our judge strength is not adequate and needs improvement.
Over the past few years the general public has become more aware of its civil rights and remedies. This has resulted in an increase in the filing of cases and the pressure upon the courts has increased tremendously. But I must reiterate that more important than increasing the number of judges is to improve the quality of the judges. A good judge will be better than many other judges of lesser ability together and will be able to dispose of more cases in a qualitative way. But I must make myself clear that by saying so, I do not mean that we do not have good judges. We have had in the past excellent judges, and now too we have excellent judges.
With such a regular and tight schedule, how do you manage to take out time for your family?
Yes, you are right, I do have a very busy schedule. But I say that no one is too busy to not to take out time for their family. The same goes with me, also. I generally try to finish my day’s work till late evenings and then have dinner with my family. Mornings I generally keep available for my family. I am now seventy years of age, and with this age I have become selective and have deliberately reduced the number of cases which I take for arguments. This way also I get time for my family and my family has never complained to me of not giving sufficient time to them.
Would you like to share with us any Court incident, which you particularly remember?
There have been many incidents which have happened in Courts which I remember, but the one incident by which I was really touched was when I had appeared for some poor employees of the Delhi Electric Supply Company. I told them that I would not accept any fee from them in their matter. But after the matter, outside the court, all of these employees, who had collected small denominations of currency notes, with tears in their eyes offered me to accept the same. That was really heart rending. A similar incident occurred when I had appeared for some school teachers in a dispute with their management.
Another incident which I remember is when I was appearing before a seven judge bench in Sham Sher Singh’s case, being presided over by Justice A. N. Ray. I felt that the learned Chief Justice was trying to hustle and hurry-up things, but Justice Krishna Iyer and some other judges persuaded him to listen further to the Special Leave Petition. I felt very encouraged with that attitude of the other judges of the bench, as I had not seen anything like that in my practice, till that date.