Rahul’s dig at collapsing judiciary

Rahul Gandhi on Saturday used the hashtag #JudiciaryDemonetised to describe how the legal system collapsing under pending cases “while Law Minister (Ravi Shankar Prasad) preoccupied peddling fake news.”

In tweet, he described 55,000 pending cases in the Supreme Court, over 37 lakh in the High Courts and 2.6 crore in lower courts and “yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 lower court judges not appointed.”

There are already seven vacancies of judges in the Supreme Court as against the sanctioned strength of 31 while six more will be retiring this year while the government is sitting over the appointments of two judges recommended by the SC collegium back on January 10.

While Justice Amitava Ray retired on March 1, the next judge to retire on May 4 is Justice R K Agrawal. Justice J Chelameswar also effectively retires on May 18, the last working day before the summer vacation though his retirement falls on June 22 during the vacation.

Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel too retires on July 6, soon after the vacation, while Chief Justice Dipak Misra will demit office on October 2, followed by Justice Kurian Joseph on November 29 and Justice Madan B Lokur on December 30.

All these judges are under quite a pressure to deliver the judgments they had reserved before stepping down and that pressure is also felt by the judges sitting on their Benches. A major worry is that the burden on the remaining judges will increase as the number of Benches will shrink further unless the government starts okaying the new appointments.