INQUISITORIAL VS ADVERSARIAL – CANVASSING A CHANGE IN THE INDIAN JUDICIAL PROCESS

Abstract

The word “access to justice” served to locus on two basic purposes of legal system – the system by which people may vindicate (claim) their rights and/or resolves their disputes under the general auspices support of the state. But today, in India, our legal system has undergone such a deep state of crisis that it is not able to provide justice to common man. Thus it has badly failed to come up to the aspirations of half – clad and half – hungry masses of independent India. Two general principles are inherent in the concept of adjudication that is ‘resolving disputes’ and ‘finding the truth.’ Adjudicators are to decide disputes by the applications of rules and principles. Even assuming that the rules and principles are correct, a dispute will not be properly decided in accordance with them unless the ‘truth’ or ‘correct facts’ are determined. In the present system in India, which is adversarial, litigants have found themselves impaled on this unholy trident of delay, cost and complexity. Now this paper shall examine the typical consequences of the adversarial mode and explain how the present system of access to justice is not based on the parity of powers between parties that leads to the denial of justice.