Is Paucity Of Judges The Only Reason For Massive Court Arrears?

There has been of late considerable verbal activity on the working ~ or malworking ~ of our justice delivery system. While a part of the confrontational utterances spring from the on-going low-key turf war between the higher judiciary and the other two estates of the realm, the rhetoric has largely focussed on the humongous court arrears. A hardy annual but welcome nevertheless. It is highly doubtful, however, that the forceful attention to the problem will in the foreseeable future result in any measurable relief to the tens of millions of people ground down by the wheels of justice which move at a pace that makes the snail look like a sprinter. The sheer magnitude of the backlog belies optimism. According to authoritative estimates, the mountain of cases pending before courts is some 800 times higher than Mt Everest! There are more than 2.5 crore cases before the lower courts and 37 lakh before the High Courts. Even in the highest court of the land , the pendency is way above the 30,000-ft highest peak in the world. Deeply harassedThose not involved in these cases tend to look at the horrendous figures as mere statistics. Behind each of these nearly three crore cases are at least twice as many deeply harassed and troubled human beings. People are impelled to approach the portals of justice for redressal of a whole range of wrongs done to them by someone or other, including the state. Quite a number of cases are by way of appeals by those who feel aggrieved by judicial verdicts at lower levels. The current debate began last November when the Chief Justice of India, in his maiden televised address on the occasion of Law Day, referred to the huge backlog and accused the government of meting out step-motherly treatment to the judiciary. Terming the plan allocation to it a pittance, Justice Balakrishnan said, “It is sad that the greatest institution is accorded the least attention” ~ resulting, among other things, in substantially undermanned benches, which fact he held squarely responsible for the exponential increase in arrears. Even more frontally, he alleged that the dismal situation is worsened in good measure by lack of “proper and good governance” that drives people in droves to courts to challenge unfair, partial and biased decisions of the authorities. Many saw in these strong words a riposte to the periodical criticism of the judiciary from high political pedestals for the mind-boggling pile-up of cases. Be that as it may, the CJI has let go no subsequent occasion, including a seminar on judicial reform the other day, to hammer away at the need for more judges. He believes there should be one judge for 500 cases, which means nearly 80,000 judges, as against some 12,000-odd now, which is several thousand fewer than even the existing sanctioned strength. Surprising and unfortunate as the non-filling of vacancies is, it is pertinent to mention here that the responsibility for the shortfall is not entirely that of the government; appointments to the High Courts where many of the around 250 vacancies have gone on for years are majorly a matter of the initiative and approval of the Supreme Court itself. Whether and when the existing shortfall will be rectified is anybody’s guess. Meanwhile, in what may or may not be an act of assuagement, the government has decided to add five more judges to the Supreme Court, raising its strength to 30. While this should go some way in expediting disposal of cases in the apex court, the Lok Sabha Speaker, for one, is not impressed. “The more the judges the more the arrears”, Mr Chatterjee said after the announcement, adding that he prefers “quality to quantity” and “greater display of determination than showmanship”. This may look like another salvo in the turf war but a lot of people would perhaps agree with the latter part of his statement. This is not to deny that the overcrowded cause list hampers quality and pace of judicial exertions. Anyone who has been in a courtroom cannot but draw a parallel with the OPD of a government hospital. Given the milling crowds it is well-nigh impossible for a doctor, however capable and conscientious he may be, to give more than fleeting attention to the patients. Ditto for the courts, except - making matters worse ~ judges have no broad spectrum cures for the litigants’ woes! In the event, to quote that quotable line from a Mumbai film, they get tareekh pe tareekh (fresh date after date for the hearing). The problem is compounded if the judge is less than efficient and ‘determined’, a fact not unknown. Hence the long delays and ever-expanding arrears. Even murder cases take years upon years; the Mumbai blast case took all of l3 years (not to mention a land dispute which according to a report some years ago is pending since the Mughal times!) To believe, however, that increasing the number of judges is all there is to expediting the laggardly justice delivery system would be wrong. The problem has many tiers to it and if we wish to remedy the woeful situation we need to take a holistic view. We have a whole corpus of law and punishment and police to nab wrongdoers and courts to punish them. But it is equally true that our laws are more elastic, our police and prosecution agencies more malleable, our lawyers more ingenious, and our court processes and procedures not just inherently slower but hugely more cumbersome than most elsewhere. Is it any wonder then that mockery of justice is as widespread as it is? Heinous crimesGoing by the book is essential but the book itself needs re-visiting. For instance, while the doctrine that you are innocent till proved guilty is unexceptionable, it is often stretched to absurd lengths, not the least in cases involving heinous crimes. Many people may see someone shooting a man (Mahatma Gandhi) or a woman (Indira Gandhi) or, to take a recent case, Jessica Lal, but you have to “prove” it ~ a process where it is not rare to see trial courts come to amazingly wrong conclusions, as happened in the last mentioned case.Involved here is the hoary Evidence Act, a defence lawyer’s best friend, and the phenomenon of courts over-relying on witness testimony and under-valuing circumstantial evidence ~ and this despite the spreading spectacle of witnesses turning hostile (for reasons not difficult to imagine). All this plus the repeated adjournments (often on absolutely flimsy grounds) is what causes the pile-up of cases. Altogether a situation where, in the words of CJI Balakrishnan’s predecessor, “the country’s justice delivery system appears to be on the verge of collapse”. By all means, let there be more judges, besides filling the vacancies without further delay. It will of course greatly help in arresting the unrelenting increase in arrears and hopefully also in reducing the backlog to an extent. But putting the system on proper rails will need a whole train of other measures.The writer is a veteran columnist and former editorBy Sumer Kaul The Statesman - Kolkata,India