Standoffs do not reduce courts’ burden
New Delhi: Recently Chief Justice of India T. S. Thakur stirred a hornet’s nest when he blamed the Narendra Modi government for its inaction to the proposal to increase the strength of judges in the judiciary from 21,000 to 40,000.
The Modi government was quick to lock horns with the judiciary by disputing Justice Thakur’s assessment that the strength of judges should be increased. The Union law minister Sadananda Gowda said the 1987 Law panel report, quoted by the CJI, that the judge population strength should be increased from 10 to 50 was not scientific and there was no data to back up this demand. He also denied that there was any delay in appointments and said the government would soon approve appointment of 169 high court judges.
With the CJI and the government disputing the number of judges required for disposal of the pending cases, let us examine the current scenario. As per the latest data available, the Supreme Court has a pendency of around 60,000 cases, The 24 high courts have 45 lakh cases and trial courts around 2.75 crore cases making it a total of around 3.25 crore cases. Judges fear that it might touch four crore cases by the end of this year because of large number of vacancies. In the subordinate courts, there are 5,000 vacancies. Together in the high courts and the subordinate courts, the vacancies are 5,449. This is about the sanctioned strength. So most high courts are working at 50 per cent strength.
The Law Commission in its report on manpower planning in 1987 placed the judge- population ratio at 10.05 judges per million people as against 50.09 in the United Kingdom, 57.07 in Australia, 75.02 in Canada and 107 in the United States. Based on population growth and litigation rate, it had recommended a nearly five- fold increase, raising the strength of judiciary to 50 judges per million population within five years. It was to attain the level of 107 judges per million people by 2000.
According to law minister Gowda, the Law Commission did not consider the judge- population ratio to be a scientific criterion for determining adequacy of judge strength in the country. It found that in the absence of complete and scientific data collection across various high courts, the “rate of disposal” method to calculate the number of additional judges needed to clear backlog and prevent new backlog is more pragmatic and useful. It said a gestation period of five years can be assumed as the Indian standard. Cases which are more than five years old are around 81 lakh.
As of now we have a national court management system. The idea is to evolve standards by which the efficiency of a judge can be measured and improved. It looks at parameters such as training, timely disposal of cases, determining the optimum burden a judge can take, and how a judge can manage cases so as to increase the output. Our effort should be to eliminate all cases which are more than five years old. If courts can dispose of these 81 lakh cases, it will be a great achievement.
Last year, the Modi government enacted the National Judicial Appointments Commission law for appointment of judges. The apex court struck down this law in October last and the memorandum of procedure was prepared by the law ministry in April this year. With the Supreme Court collegium having some reservations on certain proposals, the MoP is yet to be finalised. As a result for eight months, no appointments could be made and the process resumed only in April this year.
It may be recalled that the joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts in April witnessed an unprecedented scene when Justice Thakur broke down over inaction in filling up judicial vacancies in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who promptly intervened and promised to resolve the issue. The CJI wiped his eyes as he lamented the government’s “inaction” in raising the number of judges from 21,000 to 40,000 to handle mounting cases, saying, “You cannot shift the entire burden on the judiciary. Nothing moves.”
The Supreme Court in 2002 had supported the idea of increasing the strength of the judiciary.
A parliamentary department related standing committee on law, then headed by Pranab Mukherjee had also recommended taking the judge to people ratio to 50 from 10. But over the years no effort has been made by the successive governments to increase the strength of judges even as the institution of cases across the country has been rising rapidly resulting in huge backlog. It remains to be seen whether the Modi government will resolve this issue to the benefit of the litigants.