Flagging the huge backlog of cases and abysmal judge-to-population ratio, Chief Justice of India T S Thakur today appealed to the law graduates to join the bar or the judiciary.
Addressing the convocation of Nalsar University of Law here, Justice Thakur said that India needs "centres of excellence" in legal education for the young graduates who otherwise go abroad for higher education.
"In America, you have 150 judges per million (people) and so also in other developed countries. We have just about 18 per million. We have three crore cases pending in different courts and... 18,000 judges to handle those cases," he said.
The target of having no case older than five years pending was found to be "very difficult" because there are "lakhs and lakhs of cases which are today ten years old, 15 years old, and may be 20 years old", he said.
"To bring a case (pendency) to five years old is a great challenge, I would say. Are we ready for that?
"Are we not looking to younger generations who are passing from Nalsar and other national law schools to join legal profession and to join judiciary to help in realising the dreams of our forefathers that justice (is) accessible and justice is affordable and justice is speedy," he said.
Multinational firms may pay you a fat salary, but it will not give the job satisfaction the legal profession gives, the CJI told the young graduates.
Saying that India lacks "centres of excellence" in law, he said, "We have that capacity to build those institutions. I am working on that and told professor Faizan Mustafa (vice chancellor of Nalsar University) that we will have vice chancellors' conference where we look into the next step or next level of legal education," Justice Thakur said.
