More judges needed to clear cases in higher courts

Northern India Goods Transport Company has a case pending in the Delhi High Court since 1978, one of the over 3.6 million cases awaiting final orders from the 21 high courts across the country.

The case pileups have been occurring with alarming regularity "" cases pending in the high courts total up to 2.7 million in 1999, and a little over 3.5 million at the end of 2005. In the Supreme Court alone, the arrears of docket or the pending cases stood at 41,730 in April 2007.

Such cases in the higher courts are choking up the country's judicial system and, lawyers say, burn holes in the litigants' pockets.

"This becomes even more appaling in company cases, where a mere delay in the grant of an injunction in a case filed by a company frustrates the whole purpose of approaching a court," says Amarjit Singh Chandhiok, president, Delhi High Court Bar Association.
 

THE JUDGES' DATA
	Sanctioned   strength	Working strength
Supreme Court	26	24
High Courts	725	597
Source: www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in

According to Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan, quoted in www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in, "the present requirement of number of judges is much greater, looking to the spate of litigation, population explosion and other factors. Thus, the main cause for judicial delay lies not so much with the judiciary as with the executive and administrative wing of the government".

However, experts say the vacant judges' posts should be filled first in order to clear the backlog of cases.

The main cause for the delay in the appointment of judges in the higher courts, according to Fali S Nariman, the president of the Bar Council of India, is the inability of the collegium of judges to agree on one candidate.

"The appointment process takes a minimum of six months once a referral is sent and if the referral comes back, then it might take more than a year. There are always 100-150 referrals in the pipeline," says senior advocate Arun Jaitley.

According to Chandiok, the government gets to know at least six months in advance that a judges' post will fall vacant. Therefore, he suggests that the process of recommendations for the vacant post should begin before and not after the post falls vacant.