Report No. 77

9.3. 14th Report.-

It may, in the above context, be pertinent to refer to the observations of the Law Commission presided over by Shri M.C. Setalvad in its fourteenth Report. The Commission said:-1

"In the matter of scales of pay and remuneration, the judiciary compares unfavourably with the executive branches of the Government. It is true that, generally speaking, the scales of pay of the judicial officers and the corresponding executive officers are identical in many of the States. However, it has to be remembered that the executive officers are, by and large, recruited at a much younger age than the judicial officers.

The entrant to the Judicial service is required to be a graduate in law and in most of the States it is also necessary that he should have practised for a certain number of years at the Bar. On the other hand, for recruitment to the executive branches of Government service, a degree in arts or science is, generally speaking, sufficient.

In the result, a person entering the judicial service does so when he is about twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age and at a time when his contemporaries who have entered the executive service of the Government have already acquired a certain seniority in the service and have come to draw a higher salary. It will thus be seen that a person joining the judicial service starts with a tower remuneration than what he would have received if he had entered the executive service a few years earlier.

It has also to be noted that owing to the lesser proportion of superior posts in the Judicial Service promotions come less quickly to the Judicial officers, and a person who has entered the service as a munsiff, assuming that he is fit and fully qualified, take much longer time to become a district judge than would an equally competent deputy collector to teach the position of a collector. Again the judicial officer, having started at a later age, has a shorter span of service than the executive officer and this effects his pension and other retirement benefits."

1. 14th Report, Vol. 1.