Justic V.N. Khare Appointed Next Chief Justice of India

New Delhi - --keralamonitor.com December 13, 2002.

The President has appointed Justice Visheshwar Nath Khare, the senior most Judge of the Supreme Court, to be the Chief Justice of India with effect from December 19, 2002 (forenoon). The Warrants of Appointment, to this effect, was issued yesterday evening by the President, in exercise of the powers conferred by Clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution of India. Justice V.N. Khare will succeed Justice Gopal Ballav Pattanaik, who retires on December 19, 2002.

Justice V.N. Khare was born at Allahabad on May 2, 1939 in an illustrious family of lawyers and freedom fighters. A graduate, obtained degree of law from Allahabad University and was enrolled as an advocate on November 28, 1961. Took his law training in the chamber of his father late Bishambar Nath Khare, advocate and uncle Late S.C. Khare, senior advocate, who was an eminent lawyer of Uttar Pradesh. Justice Khare in a very short span of time acquired name and fame in legal profession specializing in civil, writ, revenue and election matters. Appointed as Chief Standing Counsel for Uttar Pradesh State Government. He had been the Chancellor’s Chief Standing counsel for all the universities in Uttar Pradesh and also counsel for most of the statutory corporations, Government undertakings and local bodies. On June 25, 1983, he was appointed as permanent Judge of Allahabad High Court and subsequently also acted as Acting Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court. On February 2, 1996, Justice Khare was appointed as Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court and subsequently on March 21, 1997 was elevated as Judge to Supreme Court.

As a Judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Khare was party to many important decisions in the matter of environmental, forests and other public interest litigations. His majority Constitutional Bench decisions in regard to levy to tax on inter-State sale, right of pre-emption, majority opinion in Presidential Reference No. 1 of 2002 arising out of the order of the Chief Election Commissioner in regard to Gujarat Election and Judgement in 11 Judges minority decisions are some of his landmark judgements. Appointed Chief Justice of India on December 19, 2002, will retire on May 2, 2004.

In a major initiative to facilitate and assist the speedy implementation of E-Governance Services and projects across the country, the Department of Information & Technology, has convened a one-day National Conference beginning here tomorrow. To be chaired by Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Communications & Information Technology, Pramod Mahajan, the focus of the meeting would be to evolve a deliverable road map for E-Governance initiatives on specific issues and subjects across the country in an effort to bring about uniformity in implementation. The meeting is also expected to unveil an Action Plan which will not only focus on value added accessible e-governance services, it will also focus on empowering the rural segments of the country with e-governance tools in an effort to tackle the digital divide. The meeting will provide an opportunity to states to use IT as a leverage tool to deliver additional value to the citizens.

The objective of the day-long meeting would be to bring together policy initiatives in the E-Governance Agenda, to secure value added Government services for citizens on matters affecting the common man. The theme adopted for the National Conference is "Land Records Management Systems" with a special focus on the initiative undertaken by the Government of Karnataka in the "Bhoomi" Programme – online delivery of land records in Karnataka. BHOOMI is a self-sustainable e-governance project for the computerized delivery of 20 million rural land records to 6.7 million farmers through 177 Government owned kiosks in Karnataka. This has eliminated red tape and corruption in the issue of land title records, and is fast becoming the backbone for credible IT-enabled Government services for the rural population. Rural Land Records have become the central conduits for delivering better IT-enabled services to citizens because they contain multiple data elements such as: ownership, tenancy, loans, nature of title, irrigation details and crops grown. The programme has been successful in creating a hassle free mechanism for change of land titles, ensured that the solution is tamper proof and is easy to administer.

The focus of the discussions would be on E-Governance projects across the country in areas relating to land records, transport department, registration department, computerization of treasuries, integrated citizen service centres and the electronic delivery of citizen services in municipalities and gram panchayats. One of the major topics of discussion is to identify problems pertaining to the effective implementation of E-Governance services. It is expected that the discussions in this regard would focus on the gaps existing between different States regarding issues pertaining to technology, management, financing, project structuring and specialized manpower.

Discussions are also likely to focus on the methods to be adopted for the simplification of procedures and formats, project management, technology issues, the initiatives to promote citizen centric projects in all States and by and large creating a capable state infrastructure for efficient value added citizen services. The meeting is being held in the background of several states having implemented innovative and pioneering projects in E-Governance. Some of the projects have been outstanding success in terms of providing citizens fast and easy accessible services.

Corruption charges against Army Judgees

LOK SABHA

Attention of the Government has been drawn to the news-item captioned "Nyay Ki Kursi par baithe hai sena ke dagdaar judge" appearing in the ‘Nav Bharat Times’ dated September 22, 2002.

The matter has been investigated. The first two Judge Advocate General (JAG) Branch Officers referred to in the news item had witnessed the document for the purchase of the property in question by the wife of GOC-in-C, Central Command. At no time any army personnel was involved in the said case as alleged.

The Court of Inquiry, which investigated the complaint against the Brigadier of the JAG Branch of the Southern Command, as referred to in the new item, also did not find him blameworthy. The Brigadier, who heads the legal set up in Headquarters Western Command, has no case against him, as per records available. This information was given by the Defence Minister George Fernandes in a written reply to A Narendra in Lok Sabha today. -keralamonitor.com December 13, 2002.