Issues With Indian Judiciary: Huge Pendency of Cases In Indian Courts ,Status of pendency of cases in the judiciary ,Poor judge-population ratio ,Impacts of Pendency of cases ,Some steps to reduce Pendency of cases

Issues With Indian Judiciary: Huge Pendency of Cases In Indian Courts

Context

• Recently the Supreme Court asked the reason from the government for delaying the process of appointment of judges. The SC also highlighted that the government has not cleared the 55 recommendations made by the Collegium for judicial appointments to High Courts.
• The total sanctioned strength in the 25 High Courts is 1,080. However, the present working strength is 661 with 419 vacancies as of March 1,2021. The SC highlighted this as one of the reasons for the pendency of cases in the Judiciary. The pendency of cases in the Judiciary is a long pending issue.

Status of pendency of cases in the judiciary

• From 2006-2019, an overall increase of 22% (64 lakh cases) was seen in the pendency of cases across all courts.
• As of August 2019, there are over 3.5 crore cases pending across the Supreme Court, the High Courts, and the subordinate courts. Amongst this, 87.3% of cases are in subordinate courts, 12.5% in High Courts and 0.2% in Supreme Court.

Causes for Pendency of cases

Poor judge-population ratio

• The judge-population ratio provides one of the most important yardsticks to measure the health of the legal system. The U.S. has about 100 judges per million population. Canada has about 75 and the U.K. has about 50. India, on the other hand, has only 19 judges per million population. Of these, at any given point, at least one-fourth is always vacant.
• In All India Judges Association v. Union of India (2001), the Supreme Court had directed the Government of India to increase the judge-population ratio to at least 50 per million population within five years from the date of the judgment. This has not been implemented.

Rising Vacancies: The courts are working below their sanctioned strength. As of 2017, High Courts have 403 vacancies out of sanctioned strength of 1,079 judges. But still, there are no filling of vacancies. Similarly, subordinate courts have 5,676 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 22,704 judges. The delay in appointments is increasing vacancies.

Less budgetary allocation: the budget allocated to the judiciary is between 0.08 and 0.09 per cent of the GDP. Only four countries — Japan, Norway, Australia and Iceland — have a lesser budget allocation and they do not have problems of pendency like India.

Rigid Procedural Requirements: A lot of paperwork needs to be done on every case which sometimes creates unnecessary delays.

Increase in the number of cases: An improvement in literacy levels, population growth and formulation of citizen-friendly tools like PIL have resulted in a huge influx of cases in courts.

Other reasons

• Poor Conduct of Lawyers like indulging in collusive corruption especially at subordinate levels in order to drag the case. Moreover, the lawyers also demand frequent adjournments for not valid reasons.
• Inefficiencies by Police Personnel by being complacent in filing charge sheets and conducting speedy investigation which creates a delay in delivering timely judgement.

Impacts of Pendency of cases

• Rising pendency creates an excess burden on judges.
• Pendency enhances the number of undertrials in the prisons which eventually leads to overcrowding. According to the NCRB data, In 2019 there were 4.78lakh prisoners. Out of which 69.05 % were undertrials.
• Affects the economy of the country as it was estimated that judicial delays cost India around 1.5% of its Gross Domestic Product annually. As per the Economic Survey 2017-18 pendency hampers dispute resolution, contract enforcement, discourage investments, stall projects, hamper tax collection and escalate legal costs which leads to Increasing cost of doing business.
• The pendency causes harassment of the accused and victim. As they need to go through significant financial, physical and mental stress for years due to the pendency. For instance, in the recent example of Vishnu Tiwari acquittal case, He spent 20 years in prison before this acquittal.
• It undermines Judicial Credibility: The faith and trust of the common man in the judicial setup are also lost if he/she didn’t receive timely justice. It is perceived that judges are indulged in some kind of favouritism towards one of the parties and are deliberately delaying the process.
• Unsatisfactory Disposal rate: The disposal rate(number of cases disposed of) has stayed between 55 -59% in the Supreme Court, 28% in the High Courts, and 40% in the subordinate courts.

Some steps to reduce Pendency of cases

• The rise in vacancies can be duly addressed with timely appointments. This would require developing a consensus over a memorandum of procedure between the executive and judiciary.
• The Supreme court has recommended that retired high court judges having domain expertise should be placed back as Ad Hoc judges. This will fast track the disposal of cases.
• The slow disposal rate can be improved by augmenting the quality of judges. For this, the government can set up All India Judicial Services(AIJS).
• An integrated digital system is required in the judiciary to streamline the process. This digital system will allow smooth interaction between various institutions through a digital platform. It will normalize the format and content of data across all the systems.
• Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms like Arbitration, Conciliation, Lok Adalats etc. should be promoted by judges. Further, legal services authorities, such as, NALSA, SALSA, DALSA and TALSA, can generate awareness.

Other steps

• The chief justices of the high courts must fast-track cases that are pending for more than 10 years.
• A long-term goal to Keep courts open 365 days a year.
• Our courts should be fully digitised and technical experts should be brought in to streamline the whole process right from when a person files a case, to updating it, to the final verdict.
• We have to do a major overhaul of “de-Britishising” of the system i.e. overhaul of archaic laws.
• Having four to five clerks for each judge to help filter out appeals, write memos, and draft decisions, which is the norm in countries such as South Africa or the United States, could greatly reduce the judges’ workload.
• Brazil disposes of about 100,000 cases each year with far fewer judges. To take on such a large load, clerks and other staff take a central role in drafting decisions for the many routine matters.
• Judicial process needs to be streamlined. Lawyers need to be penalised for delaying matters without reason.
• A multi-pronged approach needs to be adopted to tackle the issue of “government litigation”.
• The focus is on how to make the virtual courts user friendly. Once it is achieved, more cases in addition to urgent matters can be listed for adjudication.
• So, it is prudent that more virtual courts are set up so that timely delivery justice is not adversely impacted on account of the pandemic.

Conclusion

The right to fair and speedy trial must be upheld in all circumstances as it is an important component of dignified life under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. To reduce pendency of cases other reforms are also required like depends on other reforms like Prison reforms, police reforms etc.