Articles by S R Sankaran

The National Advisory Council was reborn a year after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. While the NAC of 2004 was to monitor the implementation of the 2004 National Common Minimum Programme, the NAC of 2010 has no NCMP to track but is to take up the priorities set out in the President's speech to Parliament in June 2009. It is an "advisory" body but given that its chairperson is Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling coalition and of the biggest party, any advice it renders will clearly be seen as a directive to the government, as indeed happened in 2004-06.

The amendments to Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Code through legislation have raised a lot of protests from some lawyers' associations across the country. However, the changes to the section that deals with the power of the police to arrest aim at balancing the liberty of citizens and the maintenance of peace and law and order. The power to arrest is the main cause of police excesses and needs to be circumscribed.

Crime and Punishment Reforming the Prison and Prisoner Punishment and the Prison: Indian and International Perspectives edited by Rani Dhavan Shankardass; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000;

In the present scenario of the criminal justice system in the country, arrests run into millions, the jails are overcrowded mostly with undertrials and the courts are overstretched with several lakhs of pending criminal cases. Added to these are illegal detentions and extra-judicial killings as well as deaths in police and jail custody. Systemic reforms from a people-centred point of view are long overdue. Institutions like the National Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court have to take the initiative in the matter as neither the state governments nor the central government seem to be interested in meaningful reforms.