With some similarities, people across the globe differ in observation, approach, attitude and solution of problems. When issues fail, reconciliation and resolution at primary levels of societal pedestal and religious pulpits recourse to honourable judicial courts becomes inevitable. Prospective contestants lay hopes in the seat of justice which is fiduciary in character and the honourable judges for judicious disposal of cases on the recognized principles of justice. Litigants considering themselves rightful get their cases registered. A process in a mechanism sets in involving honourable judiciary and the judicature. However, the cases as witnessed , get snowballed by time and costs more than anticipated disappointing the parties. This trend has touched the alarming point. According to latest figures collected by a monitoring system which seeks to identify and reduce pendency and the data available on the national judicial data grid as on 7-12-2017, 5,97650 cases of 10 or more than 10 years old were awaiting disposal in 20 out of 24 honourable high courts of the country. The information for the remaining four courts including honourable court of Allahabad being unavailable, the honourable court of Mumbai leads the tally with 1,29,063 cases as on 31-12-2016. Similarly in its data collected for a period of 10 years 2007 to 2017 a New Delhi based Vidhi Centre for legal policy- a think tank that conducts legal research the lower judiciary broadly comprising of three cadres of judges (i) districts judges, (ii)civil judges (Senior Division) and (iii) Civil judges ( Junior Division) with an effective strength of 16874 judges( against the sanctioned strength of 22,454 judges) has a whopping pendency of 2.6 crore cases. Adding unavailable information of cases pending with the Hon’ble Apex Court and other subordinates courts the number will mount further. Large number of cases vis-à-vis inadequate disposal mechanism has resulted in delayed justice which in legal lexicon is construed to be tantamount to denial of justice besides erosion of faith in the justice system.
Since the number of unsettled cases in the honourable judiciary runs into above crores double the number (5.32 Crore) of people are directly involved in litigation activities excluding subsidiaries and auxiliaries. As most of the people involved come from production side, huge price is paid in the form of loss of good amount of production of goods & services qualitatively and quantitatively to the utter detriment of gross domestic product . Taking the cases to involve 10 hearings during the period of three years for a decided case, the litigants/country have to forego 53.20 crores of man days ( 17.40 crore annually) coupled with mental anguish and physical fatigue the costs of which are irreparable. Monetising the production days @Rs.300/only would mean loss of Rs.5,220 crore annually. Some cases sub-judice were seen to have been decided after both or at least one principal litigants had died and or the importance of case has ceased to be worth following and fighting. As people cannot be stopped from going to courts the number of cases goes on inflating.
Different reasons are responsible for the upward trend of pendency. Foremost amongst these being less number of courts than required, inadequate staff & paraphernalia, lack of proper co-operation among the parties/witness to the suit and judicature, vast & wide net of legal framework, legal unawareness & illiteracy among masses etc, the making up of which is the primary responsibility of a responsible government to strengthen the judicial outreach horizontally and vertically with human, technological, academic resources to ease the way for arriving at just, full and conclusive decisions. Secondary responsibility sprouts from the honourable chair itself. In its judgement on the All India Judges Association, the honourable Supreme Court had outlined three ways of appointment of judges. First being via promotion on the basis of merit-cum- seniority from civil judges (Senior Division) accounting for 65 percent , second , through merit based on competitive examination held among civil judges (Senior Division) with five years of service for 10 percent, and third, by direct recruitment from the Advocates at the Bar with seven years of service for 25 percent of the total vacancies of the sanctioned strength. The time frame of 153 days for the two tier process and 273 days for a three tier process has also been laid for making recruitment against the vacancies. This needs to be adhered to by filing up the instant 5,580 vacancies working out to 25 percent of the sanctioned strength to invigorate the system of delivery of justice. Once equipped fully with requisite men and material resources, honourable judiciary is sensitive enough not to leave any scope for judicial accountability or will take suo-moto notice of it, if the need arises, before it is requested to do so from without.
The honourable chair is and supposed to be comprehensive, penetrative, decisive, efficient & economic, bold, fair and impartial to reach at the genesis of the cases not to let these get deferred, extended, prolonged more than required under legal relaxations not meriting justified consideration relevant to the dispute. Finding any of the parties trying to hoodwink the institution by casuistry, the honoured chair very well within its empowered competency is duty bound to over rule such argumentation to clinch the decision and announce the judgement/verdict in favour of the deserving direction/party for immediate dispute redressal. This can prove to be one of the sharp tools for nailing the tremendous backlog of pendent cases besides creation/strengthening of family courts, fast track courts, criminal courts, lok adaalts, alternate dispute resolution mechanism etc. by the government. Advocate fraternity is no less important for they act as a bridge between justice and access to justice. They are expected to have evaluative skills and creativity acumen to reach the most suitable conclusion in consonance with yardstick of justice. Executive wing one of the three main organs of a government too has to play a crucial role in collaboration in promoting/upholding of the collective universal conscience of justice and avoid nation’s loss of time and resources. It is the just system that holds the sky and the earth. Any imbalance is ruinous indubitably. If Legislative, judiciary and the executive are in right order subjects will sing hosannas with fourth estate writing eulogies thereof. Let us strive for such situation.
(The author is a former Sr. Audit Officer working as Consultant in the A.G’s Office Srinagar.]