Indian Judiciary

Justice delayed is justice denied and justice hurried is justice buried.

The above words told by the great Martin Luther King Jr. have great relevance with the Indian Judiciary System. It's quite a tough task to get justice through a corrupt, mismanaged and plagued justice system of a nation. From the death sentence of the 26/11 Mumbai attack culprit Ajmal Kasaab to the conviction of rapists in the infamous Nirbhayaa case of 2012, big and famous case delays for no good reasons.

The Supreme court and High Courts are big arenas of justice, a common citizen does not have the courage to reach out to local courts for their own problems as District & Subordinate courts as their environment for justice is quite unfavorable for a common man, the number of pending cases (nearly 3 crores) in these courts justifies this apprehension.

Where the problem lies in one of the vital pillars of the constitution, the Judiciary, of the largest democracy in the world?

Not enough Judges and Pending Cases

According to an estimate by former CJI T.S.Thakur, India needs nearly 65,000 -70,000 judges to dispose of 3,97,91,286 (nearly 4 crores) cases pending in all forms of Judiciary. As of 1 January 2016, we have only 21,000 judges of which there are 16,119 are in Subordinate & District courts, 598 in High Courts, 28 in the Supreme Court. All these data vary from their actual vacancies. The sanctioned no. of judges in District & Subordinate courts are 24,204, for High Courts, it's 1079, and the Supreme Court has 34.

India has 21 judges per 10 lakh population, while the same figure stands at 107 for the USA, 75 in Canada, 41 in Australia. The Law Commission Report in 1987 suggests at least 50 judges to 1 million population, and the population of India has increased by more than 50 crores since 1987.

More than 87.5% of all our cases come from District and Subordinate Courts. These courts dispose nearly of 56% of cases every year, but charms of this data only look good on paper, the reality is quite different because such a result comes through other reasons like:

1. Dismissing cases without trial (21%)

2. Transferring them to another court (10%)

3. Settling the case outside the court (19%)

With all these situations, pending cases are increasing over the course of time.

Poor System

The majority of the courts in India are running on the legacy of the colonial era. Many old and vague laws have not been drafted in a proper manner which creates a lot of problems like if someone wants to do something, he is shown a law drafted around 100 or 150 years ago and told to stop it. A large no. of laws dating back to the 1800s.

There are many other problems in the system, some of them are:

1. It is not rocket science for us to understand that every government system has a corrupt functioning, the judiciary is no different. Poor following of rules, damaged infrastructure, delay in placing litigations, corrupt advocates are some of the ground-level problems.

2. There are millions of cases that are decades old and almost forgotten by the courts. For example, The whole country knows the reality of the Nirbhaya Murder and rape case of 2012, but it still took more than 8 years for the death sentence of the culprits.

3. Almost half of the case is litigations filed by governments. In many of the cases, one government department sues another department.  In Almost 90% of cases, the government fails to prove its point and loses the case. This cause is mainly due to the poor handling by the bureaucrats.  

4. Government spending in Judiciary is so weak as only 0.4% or 0.5% of GDP is being spent on it. The exposure of technology and digitization is very poor in the Judiciary. The specialization of judges and their efficiency is lacking in lower courts.

5. Activism. Environmental activists drag every other developing step by governments ranging from Infrastructure projects, socio-economic development. These litigations create resistance for development as well as help in making the queue of cases longer.

At last, we are seeing a priority crisis in Judiciary as the Apex court is more indulged in Contempt Proceedings against a lawyer, comedians. It feels awkward to see the Supreme Court is more interested in a case related to the bail of an Editor of a news channel than other public-based issues. Its priority lies in hearing cases against comedians, activists by ignoring important cases like CAA, restoration of the internet in J&K, scams, and other cases that directly affect people.