New Delhi, June 17 -- The Supreme Court has proposed a nationwide mechanism for daily judicial access inside prisons, asking the Union government to explore a policy wherein court-appointed judges visit jails every day to ensure that undertrial prisoners are not deprived of constitutional safeguards when they are not produced before courts. Proposing an important prison-monitoring reforms, a bench of justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R Mahadevan suggested that judicial officers posted in local civil courts could hold proceedings inside prison premises every day and interact with undertrial prisoners who are not otherwise required to be physically produced before trial courts on a particular date. "One option can be that a judicial officer posted in the local civil courts visits the concerned jail everyday and undertrials who are not required for any effective hearing before the court may be produced before the said officer, in a separate area earmarked for such proceedings, within the jail premises," said the bench in a recent order. The court explained that such a mechanism would ensure that prisoners are able to directly communicate with judicial authorities regarding any concerns relating to their incarceration. "This is for the reason that the concerned prisoner is given an opportunity to interact directly with the Court without having any fear or pressure relating to the condition under which he is being incarcerated," it underlined. The bench also asked additional solicitor general SV Raju, appearing for the Union ministry of home affairs, to hold consultations with state police authorities and high courts across the country to devise modalities for ensuring compliance with the legal requirement that an undertrial prisoner be produced before a court at intervals not exceeding 15 days. "We find such production absolutely necessary," said the bench while directing that possible solutions be worked out and placed before the court. The directions came in a case that began with the apex court's examination of the plight of an undertrial prisoner lodged in Maharashtra who was not produced before the trial court on 55 out of 85 hearing dates, largely because of a shortage of police escorts. The court had earlier described such explanations as "unacceptable" and warned that the constitutional rights of incarcerated persons cannot be sacrificed due to administrative deficiencies. In March, the bench expanded the proceedings into a nationwide exercise after observing that the problem was not confined to a single state but reflected a larger systemic failure affecting undertrial prisoners across India. "We are of the opinion that this is not a localised situation, but rather a pan-India situation, which the Court is inclined to address for the larger public benefit and especially, when it relates to the life and liberty of a common man," the bench had observed at the time. The bench had also underlined that production before a court is not a mere procedural formality but a vital safeguard for incarcerated persons. The matter is scheduled to be heard next on July 27....