With 14.4 judges per million people, undertrials at historic high

Source: The post is based on the article “With 14.4 judges per million people, undertrials at historic high” published in Business Standard on 23rd July 2022.

What is the News?

This article talks about the vacancies in the judiciary and the increasing number of undertrials in jails.

What are the key highlights?

Undertrials: The number of people languishing in the country’s prisons while undergoing trials has increased by 26% between 2016 and 2020. The undertrials take up 90% of the total prison capacity.

Judges per million: In India, there are just 14.4 judges for every one million population compared to 210 judges per million in Europe and 150 in the United States.

Note: In 2003, the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System headed by Justice V S Malimath, had recommended raising India’s judge strength to 50 per million.

Judicial Vacancies: There are 24,521 sanctioned posts in the lower court of which 5,180 or 21% are vacant. 

– In the high courts and the Supreme Court, 34.4% of the sanctioned strength of 1,108 is vacant. 

Pendency of Cases: The lower courts are dealing with 42 million open cases.

There are another 5.9 million cases before the high courts and 72,062 before the Supreme Court.