Justice Wagon: Time to oil judicial cogwheels

Justice Wagon: Time to oil judicial cogwheels

Kamlendra KanwarUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 03:57 PM IST
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New Delhi: Chief Justice of India Justice T S Thakur at a welcome function in the honour of Chief Justices of all the High Courts, at the Supreme Court in New Delhi on Friday. PTI Photo by Manvender Vashist (PTI4_22_2016_000169B) |

The manner in which the Supreme Court chief justice, T.S.Thakur, broke down at a conference of chief justices of high courts and chief ministers of states addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently was indeed regrettable in so far as it reflected not just anguish and emotional disquiet at the “avalanche” of backlogged cases but also pointed to a sense of helplessness.

The highest judicial functionary in the country needs to pick up cudgels rather than what can be interpreted by some as throwing in the towel. The entire judiciary in the country and the millions of litigants are looking up to him for innovative steps to speed up the litigation process and to surmount any dragging of feet by politicians and bureaucrats. His sense of disquiet is understandable because the backlog is playing havoc with justice but it is wrong for him to make a public display of a sense of despair.

It is true that successive governments are partly to blame for not increasing the number of judges with the result that over 300 million cases have piled up and the manpower and infrastructure for courts, particularly subordinate court, are far short of what is required. India currently has 21,000 judges even though the law commission, a government body, recommended almost three decades ago that at least 40,000 were needed, but it would be foolhardy for the judiciary to absolve itself of blame.

Former Chief Justice R.M. Lodha had said when he was CJI in May 2014: “Governments think the judiciary is a non-productive organ of the state. They hardly spend on the judiciary…less than 0.5% of the budget is spent on the judiciary. Let’s hope the new government gives more attention to the judiciary.” He added that “barely 0.11% of the 2014-15 central budget of Rs 17.60 lakh crore is proposed to be spent on law and justice.”

But semantics aside, Indian courts are notorious for their slow pace in which hearings can go on for years, or even decades. Adjournments are the order of the day often on the flimsiest of excuses. For that the judiciary needs to do some soul-searching and instead of passing the buck, it needs to sit across the table with government representatives to find workable and practical solutions.

The tension between the executive and the judiciary is all too obvious. It came to the fore when the Chief Justice broke down and again when the government warned the higher judiciary against wasting “judicial time” on “fruitless” endeavours like entertaining a PIL petition to set up a “national court of appeal.”

A former Supreme Court judge, Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly, had suggested that considering the staggering arrears, vacations in the higher judiciary must be curtailed by at least 10 to 15 days and the court working hours should be extended by at least half-an hour. But expectedly, there were few takers in the judiciary for this proposal.

Justice Ganguly had also opined that the huge pendency of court cases in India could be brought down by a combination of using latest technology, computerisation of lower court records, establishing more fast track courts, reforms at village level, setting up Gram Nyayalayas, increase of court timings, setting up of morning and evening courts, filling up existing judges’ vacancies, more number of courts and judges; by strictly following case managements, fixing timeframe for cases, special courts for different subject matters etc. There are many suggestions and yet implementation and decision-making are absent.

The Indian judicial system is one of the largest in the world. But, according to a 2012 National Court Management Systems report, although the number of judges increased six-fold in the last three decades, the number of cases shot up 12-fold. Even by conservative estimates, the number of cases reaching courts will touch 15 crore requiring at least 75,000 judges in the next three decades, the report said.There are other factors also that contribute to the pile-up of cases. The infrastructure available for courts – particularly lower courts – is inadequate. Many courts function from rented buildings. Justice Ganguly had also suggested that many cases are filed on similar points and one judgment can decide a large number of cases. Such cases should be clubbed with the help of technology and used to dispose other such cases on a priority basis; this will substantially reduce the arrears. Coming from a senior practitioner such a suggestion must get due traction.

Delays take various shapes and forms. Recently, in actor Salman Khan’s hit-and-run case, which has been dragging on for the past 13 years, the Bombay High Court suspended the sentence handed over to the actor by the Sessions Court. This in effect amounted to pressing the restart button on a case that has already taken inordinately long.

A former Allahabad High Court judge pointed out recently that the greatest litigant is the state for the simple reason that its officers, especially administrative and police officials, pass orders in matters put before them without applying their minds. Much of their orders reflect arbitrariness causing grievance to the parties concerned. With no other option the latter approach the court.

In a country where passing the buck is a common practice, the government and the judiciary typically evade their own responsibility and point fingers at others. With accountability lacking in all walks of life, most well-meaning reforms fall by the wayside.

If there is to be meaningful movement towards speedier dispensation of justice, it is incumbent on key functionaries like the prime minister, the law minister, the chief justice of India to show greater determination to implement reforms. But the problem of pendency has gone out of hand and no half-measures would do any more.

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