On a day government said over three crore cases are pending across the country, the Law Commission today recommended taking "urgent measures" to increase the strength of judges in High Courts and subordinate courts and need to set up timeframe to dispose of cases.
In a report submitted to the Law Ministry, the Commission, which advices government on complex legal issues, also recommended increasing the retirement age of judges of lower courts to 62, bringing it on par with judges of the 24 High Courts.
It said there is an "urgent need" to "fix rational, non-mandatory timeframes for different types of cases and use such timeframes as a basis for setting judge performance standards, litigant expectations and making more robust policy recommendations for the judiciary."
Quoting a Supreme Court directive, it said it is neither advisable nor feasible nor judicially permissible to draw or prescribe an outer limit for conclusion of all criminal proceedings and therefore it was not in favour of mandatory timeframe for disposal of cases.
According to Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who tabled the latest data on pending cases in the country in the Lok Sabha today, while 63,843 cases are pending in the Supreme Court as on May one, 44.62 lakh cases were pending in the 24 High Courts at the end on 2013.
At the end of 2013, 2.68 crore cases were pending in the various subordinate courts. The total comes to about 3.13 crore cases.
He said against the approved strength of 906, the 24 High Courts were functioning with a working strength of 636 judges -- a shortfall of 270.
