CJAR Executive Committee Meeting

5^th February 2016

6/6 basement, Jangpura B, Delhi – 110014

Persons attended

1. Prashant Bhushan
2. Cheryl Dsouza
3. Devvrat
4. National Forum for Housing Rights – Indu Prakash Singh
5. Indira Unninayar
6. Siddharta Sharma
7. NCDHR – Ramesh Nathan
8. NFIW – Koninika
9. NCPRI – Saumya Gupta
10. Common Cause – Vipul Mudgal, Pallavi
11. NAPM – Madhuresh
12. Programme for Social Action – Vijayan
13. NCPRI – Amrita Johri
14. Lok Raj Sanghatan – Dr. Venkatesh

The meeting was attended by most of the newly nominated Executive members or someone from their organization representing them.

DAKSH and Data on judiciary – We were to start with a skype presentation by DAKSH on the use of their database to generate information on the judiciary like judge-advocate connect, pendency of cases, etc. However due to technical difficulties this could not be taken through. This will be presented at the next Campaign Committee meeting on the 18^th of March.

NCDHR –  Dr. Ramesh Nathan from NCDHR gave a brief on the “Justice Under Trial” report, a study undertaken in 5 Indian States on the lack of access to the courts under the POA, Act. NCHDR and CJAR are now preparing a summary of that report and generating some action points for the Campaign to take forward. This will be sent out for comments to the executive committee next week. This report will also be sent to DAKSH to determine what else can be extracted from the database  in order to determine that cases under the SC/ST POA, Act are not being fairly dealt with. DAKSH would need to determine whether some analysis can be done to show that majority cases are valid cases which have been falsely acquitted and that there is a clear bias.

Representation on Collegium Reforms – It was decided that as an action point the Campaign should prepare a representation on the Collegium Reforms as a Memorandum of Procedure is now being prepared by the government. Cheryl, Indira, Devvrat, Siddharth and Dr. Venkatesh are working on it and this will be sent out to the executive group for finalizing by the end of the week.

Website content and Statements from CJAR – It was decided that before any content is uploaded to the website or before a statement is sent out from CJAR, the same would be sent to the Executive Committee on email and once more than 3 members agree to it, it would be posted or issued.

It was decided that all members of the CJAR executive group would proactively keep track t of important developments in the judiciary and in their spheres of work and flag it to CJAR so it can be taken  up. News reports, studies, any other information will be sent by each member of the executive group CJAR secretariat.

Sub Groups – It was also decided that the sub groups will be operationalized during this month and they will present a plan for their working at the Campaign Committee meeting on the 18^th of March.

The CJAR website is being revamped.