By IANS
New Delhi : India is 60 and so is a petty property dispute – of 1947 vintage – between two parties hailing from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu that has only now been decided upon by the Supreme Court. But the story is not yet over.
The Supreme Court last Thursday ordered that both parties to the dispute would have half of the property – involving the division of dry fish – worth Rs.7,000 at 1947 prices.
Giving its verdict on the dispute, a bench of Justice A.K. Mathur and Justice Markandey Katju relegated the six decades old dispute to the court of Kanyakumari’s district judge to adjudicate further which part of the property would go to whom.
The sixty long years in settling a simple dispute like this left the apex court bench agonised.
“We express our deep concern and anguish about this situation. Because of the delay in disposal of cases, people in this country are fast losing faith in the judiciary,” the bench lamented.
In fact, the dispute between the two parties in this case was of such a petty nature that the bench did not even elaborate upon the dispute.
Noting recent media reports, the judge said, “We saw in the media the news of the lynching of suspected thieves in Bihar’s Vaishali district, the gunning down of an under-trial prisoner outside the Patna City Civil Court and other such incidents, where people have taken the law into their own hands.”
“This is obviously because many people have started thinking that justice will not be done in the courts due to delay in court proceedings,” the judge said.
“This is indeed an alarming state of affairs and we once again request the concerned authorities to do the needful in the matter urgently before the situation goes totally out of control,” the bench stressed.