New Delhi: President A P J Abdul Kalam on April 26 said eradication of corruption in public life is vital to achieve the dream vision of making India a developed nation by 2020.

Giving a call for making India corruption free, Kalam said, "If we cannot make India corruption free, then the vision of making the nation developed by 2020 would remain as a dream."

Inaugurating a seminar "Access to Justice", Kalam referred to judiciary as the "guardian of civilised society" and said, "The members of judiciary therefore become inviolable role models, the perfect incorruptible ideals of a civilised society."

On corruption, the President said "if we cannot eliminate corruption and make transparent governance, the vision to become a developed India by 2020 will become a remote dream."

"In short, I am asking the judicial community to start a nationwide movement to form a corruption free India, just like your forefathers who started the movement for independence," he added.

Kalam said majority of the people in India were ignorant about their rights and the Courts of law and Judicial System had to work to protect the rights of their citizens.

Underlining the need for providing access to justice to everyone in time and in a user friendly manner, he posed a query as to whether the mandate of Article 39A of the Constitution to provide justice on the basis of equal opportunity has been achieved.

Asking the law makers to be futuristic and keep an eye on the evolving spheres of cyber laws, Intellectual property laws, he said there was a need for protection of Indian space above 30 kilometre altitude as the International Law on space might not be sufficient.

Describing Judiciary as the "Angels and Marshals" ensuring survival of democracy, the President said Judiciary was the whole process of interpreting the social, political, economical and human environment to ensure that wholesome life with dignity and distinction was sustained.

"The fundamental and over-riding importance of the system cannot be overstated and the need for constantly maintaining its purity not forgotten," he said.

Chief justice of India V N Khare, while admitting that judiciary was bogged down by huge pendency rate of cases, said the country has just 13,000 judicial officers though the need was for 75,000 officers.

Terming the justice dispensation by Mughal emperor Jehangir as ideal, justice Khare said despite the problems, judiciary was making an all out effort to reduce the backlog.

Law and Justice Minister Arun Jaitley said India has taken significant strides to grant access to justice system but several important steps were needed.

He said the exorbitant cost of litigation and the long distance a litigant had to travel to reach a court of law were the two biggest impediments in the easy access to justice.

"We have to simplify our laws, so that a litigant does not have to spend 10 years in a court," he said and added the need of the hour was to strengthen the alternative dispute redressal system.

Attorney general Soli J Sorabjee suggested that to reduce the backlog and streamline the justice delivery system, the senior advocates at the Bar should volunteer to render service as a Judge for at least six months.

The seminar is being organised by Advocates-on-Record Association of the Supreme Court with support from United National Development Programme (UNDP).

PTI