When judges in Lucknow recently pedalled their way to courts in response to the Prime Minister’s call for fuel conservation and austerity, the symbolic exercise brought back memories of a time when cycling to court was not a choice, but a compulsion for most judicial officers in Uttar Pradesh.
For retired judicial officers, the sight also revived memories of another chapter in the state’s judicial history — the pooled vehicle system under which five judges had to share a government vehicle to travel to office and back home.
PN Parashar, former All India Judges’ Association working president and ex-UP Judicial Officers’ Association chief, remembers the days when judicial officers routinely travelled by bicycle or rickshaw.
“When I joined as a munsif magistrate in Pilibhit in the mid 1970s, I used to cycle to court every day and continued to do so for several years,” he recalled. Parashar said the situation was often a source of discomfort for judges.
“An SDM, a tehsildar or even a treasury officer living in the same officers’ colony would have a government car or jeep, while judicial officers would travel by bicycle or rickshaw,” he said.
According to him, the demand for better transport facilities remained one of the longstanding concerns of the subordinate judiciary. Matters improved gradually over the years and, when posted in Lucknow as chief judicial magistrate, Parashar became the first judicial officer in Uttar Pradesh to be allotted a jeep through the high court.
“But that was only an exception and not the rule,” he said. Yet transport-related issues persisted. For years, judicial officers had to depend on a pooled vehicle system in which a group of five officers shared a government vehicle. The arrangement, introduced as an administrative measure, was widely viewed within judicial circles as inconvenient and impractical and even humiliating.
Former judicial officers recall that the system often led to practical difficulties. Officers had to coordinate schedules, routes and timings, while questions of seniority and protocol occasionally surfaced over seating arrangements and travel priorities.
“In the 1990s and 2000s judges had to carpool not as a choice but as a compulsion though the carpooling system posed many practical difficulties related to timings, protocol, sitting arrangements etc,” said DN Srivastav, another former UP Judicial Officers Association president.
Anil Vashisth, who retired as a presiding officer of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Orai, last month recalled how as a young officer he committed a silly mistake of breaching the protocol related to the sitting arrangement in the pooped car.
“Once, out of ignorance, I sat on the Ambassador’s rear seat that was otherwise reserved for senior judges. I was later made to realise the mistake, though politely,” he said.
The transport issue eventually found its place before the First National Judicial Pay Commission headed by Justice KJ Shetty in the mid 1990s. The commission examined service conditions of judicial officers and recommended improvements, including transport facilities. The Uttar Pradesh government implemented the recommendations in 2006, though the pooled vehicle arrangement continued for some time.
The pooled system was finally replaced after recommendations of the subsequent judicial pay commission, which provided judicial officers with a fixed fuel allowance and driver facility, while senior judicial officers continued to use state vehicles.
“It is true a pooled car system was often resisted by judges then as it posed many practical challenges and ran counter to their dignity. Now, while senior-most judges including the district judge, the first ADJ in a district get state vehicles, other judicial officers get a fixed 75 litres of diesel/petrol per month plus driver allowance,” said Harendra Bahadur Singh, president of the UP Judicial Officers’ Association.
Today, as carpooling and cycling are being promoted as symbols of austerity and fuel conservation, for many retired judicial officers, they are reminders of a period when transportation was among the most persistent service-condition issues faced by the state judiciary.
