{"id":223169,"date":"2023-01-19T20:12:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T14:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=223169"},"modified":"2023-02-20T19:00:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T13:30:15","slug":"look-whos-feeding-pendency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/look-whos-feeding-pendency\/","title":{"rendered":"Look Who\u2019s Feeding Pendency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>&#8211; The post is based on the article <strong>\u201cLook Who\u2019s Feeding Pendency\u201d <\/strong>published in<strong> The Times of India <\/strong>on <strong>19th January 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: <\/strong>GS2- Functioning of judiciary<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance<\/strong>&#8211; Issues impacting the justice delivery<\/p>\n<p><strong>News<\/strong>&#8211; The article explains the issue of judicial delays and pendency of cases in courts of India.<\/p>\n<p>Over 4 crore cases are pending in the subordinate judiciary, apart from 56 lakh in HCs and about 70,000 in SC.<\/p>\n<p>Government has proposed engaging lawyers as judges and bringing back retired judges as \u2018ad hoc\u2019 judges as <strong>out-of-the-box remedies<\/strong> to tackle this issue<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What are three important factors for the huge pendency of cases and delays in the judicial system?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Adjournment<\/strong>&#8211; <strong>Mechanical adjournmen<\/strong>t at all tiers of the judiciary is the single biggest contributor to the pendency of cases.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Procedure for adjournment is not codified<\/strong> in our statute book. Adjournments are asked and given <strong>casually<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>A faint attempt was made when the <strong>Civil Procedure Code<\/strong> was amended exactly two decades ago. It says that each adjournment decision should <strong>specify the reason<\/strong> for the adjournment. It should not exceed <strong>three adjournments<\/strong> before the verdict is pronounced. These rules are not <strong>followed in true spirit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Admission<\/strong>&#8211; Admissions of new cases are also responsible for long pendency. Admission rate in SC is a healthy 11%, HCs are too <strong>permissive<\/strong>. HCs admit almost all cases brought before them. There are <strong>no rules for admission<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Appea<\/strong>l- Appeals is the third factor contributing to judicial delays. The government is the biggest culprit here. Bureaucrats opt for appeal against every single order to save their <strong>own reputation and to delay losses<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is the way forward to resolve the issue of judicial delays?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The issues related to <strong>frequent adjournments, admissions and appeals<\/strong> must be addressed. Constitutional courts must first <strong>practise prudence<\/strong> on the three \u2018A\u2019s and then ensure it percolates down to magistrate courts.<\/p>\n<p>Every adjournment should be treated as a <strong>minor judicial decision<\/strong> requiring a written reason. As a result, the rate of adjournments will reduce.<\/p>\n<p>Judges should disallow adjournments at least in cases where either of the parties enjoys an <strong>interim order of stay or injunction or status quo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source&#8211; The post is based on the article \u201cLook Who\u2019s Feeding Pendency\u201d published in The Times of India on 19th January 2023. Syllabus: GS2- Functioning of judiciary Relevance&#8211; Issues impacting the justice delivery News&#8211; The article explains the issue of judicial delays and pendency of cases in courts of India. Over 4 crore cases are&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/look-whos-feeding-pendency\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Look Who\u2019s Feeding Pendency<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10496],"class_list":["post-223169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-times-of-india","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704776659},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}