Context: A measure of the justice delivery system is the pendency of cases in courts across the country. The article talks about the need and the ways to address judicial pendency.

• The term pendency is used to refer to all cases which have not yet been disposed of, without any reference to how long the case has spent in the judicial system.

Issues

• At present, despite good intentions, the Indian judiciary is moving towards a disaster and needs immediate attention.
• More than 40% of cases are decided after three years in India, while in many other countries less than 1% of cases are decided after three years.
• If India does not act decisively and quickly, this percentage will keep increasing.
• The rich, the powerful and the wrongdoers make wrong use of the judiciary by getting their cases expedited or delayed as they wish.
• The increase in corruption and crime is a direct fallout of the sluggish justice delivery system, severely impacting the poor and marginalised. For them, the judicial process itself becomes a punishment.
• Data shows that about 70% of prisoners in India are undertrials and are mostly poor citizens.

Need for Speedy Justice

• “Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim. It means that if legal redress or equitable relief to an injured party is available, but is not forthcoming in a timely fashion, it is effectively the same as having no remedy at all.
• People with problems, like people with pains, want relief and they want it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
• A measure of the justice delivery system is the pendency of cases in courts across the country.

Ensuring Speedy Justice
The following measures can be implemented to tackle this issue.
Filling Vacancies

• Reduce the pendency of cases by filling sanctioned judicial positions, by expediting the process of judicial appointments.
• The responsibility of ensuring near-zero vacancies should be with the Chief Justices of the High Courts and the Chief Justice of India and they should be held accountable for the same.
• Filling all vacancies may result in a requirement of about 5,000 courtrooms. A simple solution would be to run 5,000 courts in two shifts.

Use of technology

• In the backdrop of the pandemic, there is a dire need of improving working with the use of technology.
• The e-Committee of the Supreme Court has been in existence since 2005. It has made the following outstanding recommendations which are not being followed.
• Computer algorithms should decide on case listing, case allocation and adjournments with only a 5% override given to judges.
• All rational reasons and limits should be put on adjournments. Case listing should give the main weightage to ‘first in, first out’.
• Case allocation should take into account logical criteria. This would be a big step in reducing arbitrariness and the unfair advantage that the powerful enjoy.
• The courts should focus on e-filing. This should be implemented in all seriousness and would also save about three lakh trees annually.
• Virtual hearings must be considered. COVID-19 prompted the courts to adopt virtual hearings. If a hybrid virtual hearing model is not adopted, the backlog of cases could cross 5 crores in 2022. The dysfunctional justice system will be perpetually overwhelmed. All the courts in the country must switch to a hybrid virtual mode immediately and start disposing of cases.

Indianise Courts

• In the backdrop of the increasing backlog of cases in the Indian courts, the Chief Justice of India has made a plea to ‘Indianise’ courts.
• That is to make them responsive to the needs of the Indian citizens.

Conclusion

• All the recommendations are based on the Supreme Court’s various decisions and the e-Committee’s recommendations. These would require no changes in laws.
• At a conference, High Court Chief Justices and the Chief Justice of India and the government could make decisions on all of this.
• If all this is done, India’s judicial system can rank among the 10 top countries of the world. These changes would make India the preferred nation for international investments and also fulfil the fundamental right to speedy justice of citizens.