In the early years of the decade that is coming to a close, annual surveys of the performance of the judiciary celebrated the power and glory it had acquired over the years by exercising the full mandate conferred on it by the Constitution. In a tragic twist, the closing year saw impeachment motions against two high court judges, a dim-witted delivery boy dropping a cash bag at the house of the wrong high court judge, Supreme Court judges shooting observations from the hip only to apologise later, recusals galore, and the Chief Justice of India prevaricating on whether the Right to Information Act covers the assets of judges. Altogether, it was not a magnificent year.
The year did not yield any memorable judgments either. Perhaps they are all in the womb of the Supreme Court, waiting to be delivered in good time. Among the major cases argued were the Ambani brothers’ legal spat over KG Basin gas, the fate of the Company Law Tribunal, powers of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission in deciding trading margins, validity of narco tests, and the removal of governors. Considering that the Chief Justice will retire in May next year, there would be a rush of Constitution Bench judgments then.
The latest figures released by the Supreme Court show that the cases pending in the court have risen from 52,592 to 53,221 between June and September this year. The oldest case traced (without official help) is Sikkim Tobacco Ltd vs Golden Tobacco Ltd. It was referred to arbitration in 1984, came back to the court with 25 volumes of documents, and has been in the record room since then.
The number of cases pending in the 21 high courts is 40,18,914. The Allahabad High Court leads in arrears with 950,000 cases, followed by the Madras High Court with 467,000, the Bombay High Court with 340,000, and the Calcutta High Court with 309,000. The subordinate courts have to deal with 2,71,20,108 cases.
Meanwhile, there are 254 vacancies in the high courts which have a sanctioned total strength of 886. Again, the Allahabad High Court leads with 77 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 160, followed by 23 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, 21 in the Patna High Court, 20 in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, 18 in the Calcutta High Court and10 in the Bombay High Court.
Appointments for the Supreme Court and the high courts are delayed as they are riddled with controversies, though not always at the shrill pitch of the Dinakaran affair. The Constitution does not lay down any procedure for the selection of Supreme Court and high court judges. The executive had primacy till 1995, which was then snatched by the apex judiciary. However, the machinery which it set up, consisting of a “collegium” of five senior-most judges, has been caught in an unseemly debate. The Chief Justice of India himself observed last month that the high courts were packed with the favourites of the respective chief justices and merit was no consideration. He added that the situation has now been corrected.
The Law Commission also stated in its 230th report that inefficient persons were being elevated to judgeship at the higher levels. These damning statements are in line with the candid statement of a former Chief Justice that one-third of the judiciary is corrupt.
Though the Chief Justice of India and his brethren have been given a hike (a monthly salary of Rs 1 lakh for the CJ and Rs 90,000 for his colleagues), this is much less than what an IIT undergraduate is offered at the campus. The subordinate judges have been fighting their case in the Supreme Court for years and their lot is improving, but slowly.
The fault lies not only with the judiciary but also with the government. It is the largest litigant in all courts. Ironically, it also holds the purse strings for the infrastructure and running of the whole legal system. But it has a stake in slowing down the works for various reasons. So the state budgets provide funds to the courts equivalent to health and education. The judge-litigant ratio is abominably low and the poor infrastructure facilities give the courts the look of a crowded railway junction without guideposts.
The new law minister at the Centre has no “road map” even after several months of his taking over the reins. The Law Commission was very productive in the last year but its two dozen reports suggesting reforms have not been considered seriously by the government. They have been stacked unceremoniously along with the 300 other reports of the past. Successive Chief Justices have warned the government that the system is collapsing, but the latter thinks that the sky would fall before that — or at least its term will end before the apocalypse.
