The reforms that weren't

A few days after Tirath Singh Thakur took over as Chief Justice of India last month, he asked senior lawyers present in his court to cooperate in reducing the length of arguments and cut down holidays. The answer was ambiguous: the bar association was conducting elections to choose its leaders for 2016 and the new committee would consider the judge's request. Moreover, the issues raised in the cases are complex and they have to be argued at length, they said. Earlier, then Chief Justice R M Lodha had mooted the idea of less holidays, but the legal profession was overwhelmingly against the innovation and the proposal was shelved.

With nearly 60,000 cases before the Supreme Court, radical reforms should have been launched long ago. Instead, the institution was sinking slowly over the decades. With the exception of holding of Lok Adalats periodically, one could think of hardly any reform, let alone a game-changer. Lok Adalat is in a way an admission that the judicial system is not working.

In 1950, when the Supreme Court was established, it had eight judges and a registry with three court rooms. They had little work. The court rooms were sufficient and the main one dealt with only Constitutional matters. Now, there are 14 court rooms and 30 judges. Still there are cases going back to the 1980s that have not been resolved yet. Scores of Constitutional matters are gathering dust, and sittings of Constitution benches have become a rare event.

The judges, lawyers and government could have improved the system, but none of these wings has put their heart into it. The chief justices, who hold administrative control, have short tenures of just over a year and they have no time to tackle the huge task. Judgments are not delivered within reasonable time after hearing is closed. Judges do not give a time frame for arguments, which tend to last weeks even for a single case. Adjournments are asked for and given routinely. These are important areas where judges' initiatives are possible but neglected.

Lawyers are beneficiaries of the chaotic system and tend to stall any change that might affect their business, like changing the pecuniary jurisdiction of courts. The synopses of cases, purportedly to help judges, run into hundred-odd pages. With all the paraphernalia, it is mostly adjournments they win. Once an interim order is obtained, the final hearing and decision, which come after years are of little interest to them. So there have been few initiatives for reforms from them.

The government has a stockpile of Law Commission reports with well-meaning recommendations. If even half of them were implemented, like streamlining colonial-era procedures, the present situation would not have arisen. On the other hand, the government has starved judiciary with a budgetary allocation of 0.2 per cent. The judge-population ratio is a miserable 13 for every 1 million against 35-40 in other developing countries. Around 40 per cent of high court judges' posts are vacant (426) at the moment. Computerisation would have removed paper mountains from court rooms and registry. On top of all these, the government and judiciary are currently in an unseemly confrontation mode. Urgent reforms are not on the agenda of any main player.