How to grease the wheels of justice

Synopsis: The problem of pendency of cases in courts across the country can be tackled with a few measures.

Introduction

Recently, in an event, the Chief Justice of India raised his concern over the pendency of cases. He made a plea to “Indianise” courts to make courts more responsive towards the needs of people. He said people do not seek the court to be modern, instead, they want early resolution of their cases in a cheaper way.

What is the present status?

In India, more than 40% of cases are decided after three years. While in many other countries less than 1% of cases are decided after three years.

Present status impacts more to the poor and marginalized, while benefits the rich and powerful section. They tend to delay their cases according to their wish. Moreover, an increase in corruption and crime also affects justice delivery. Data shows that about 70% of prisoners in India are undertrials and are mostly poor citizens.

What should the government/judiciary do?

Filling vacancies: There is a need to reduce the pendency of cases by filling sanctioned judicial positions. Analysis shows that between 2006 and 2019, the average increase in pendency was less than 2% per year. Whereas, the average vacancy in sanctioned judicial positions was about 21%. If the sanctioned positions had been filled, the pendency of cases would have gone down each year.

Technology: e-Committee of the Supreme Court provides the following recommendations. These need to implement in the system:

Firstly, computer algorithms should decide on case listing, case allocation and adjournments with only a 5% override given to judges. Under this rational reason and limits should be put on adjournments; case listing should give the main weightage to ‘first in, first out’; and case allocation should take into account logical criteria.

Secondly, Courts should focus on e-filing. The e-Committee gave guidelines on how petitions and affidavits can be filed. It also talks about payment of fees should be done electronically, without lawyers or litigants having to travel to the courts or use paper.

Thirdly, Courts should focus on Virtual Hearing. There is a need to adopt the hybrid virtual hearing model. In pre-COVID-19 years, the increase in the pendency of cases in all courts is about 5.7 lakh cases a year. In 2020 alone, it increased to 51 lakh. It is assumed that if a hybrid virtual hearing model is not adopted, the backlog of cases could cross 5 crores in 2022.

If all the above recommendations are adopted by the system, there are chances that India’s judicial system can rank among the 10 top countries of the world. These changes would make India the preferred nation for international investments and also fulfil the fundamental right to speedy justice of citizens.

Source: This post is based on the article “How to grease the wheels of justice” published in The Hindu on 29^th September 2021.