2. The poor shall not be priced out of the Justice market by insistence on court-fee and refusal to apply the exemptive provisions of Order 33, cpc
“5……Our perspective is best projected by Cappelletti, quoted by the Australian Law Reform Commission:
“The right of effective access to justice has emerged with the new social rights. Indeed, it is of paramount importance among these new rights since, clearly, the enjoyment of traditional as well as new social rights presupposes mechanisms for their effective protection. Such protection, moreover, is best assured by a workable remedy within the framework of the judicial system. Effective access to justice can thus be seen as the most basic requirement – the most `basic human right' – of a system which purports to guarantee legal right.” [ M. Cappelletti, Rabels, (1976) 669 at 672]
We should expand the jurisprudence of access to justice as an integral part of Social Justice and examine the constitutionalism of court-fee levy as a facet of human rights highlighted in our Nation's Constitution. If the State itself should travesty this basic principle, in the teeth of Articles 14 and 39-A, where an indigent widow is involved, a second look at its policy is overdue. The Court must give the benefit of doubt against levy of a price to enter the temple of justice until one day the whole issue of the validity of profit-making through sale of civil justice, disguised as court-fee, is fully reviewed by this Court…”
State of Haryana v. Darshana Devi (1979) 2 SCC 236
