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Open Forum
New Delhi, 7 March 2008
Eliminating
Judicial Delays
MORE JUDGES ONLY
PARTIAL REMEDY
By U.C. Agarwal
Former Central
Vigilance Commissioner
On the Government of India’s decision to appoint some
additional judges to the Supreme Court, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee
reportedly commented that “more the number of judges more would be the delay”.
This recalls to mind the famous Parkinson’s Law according to which “work
expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Would it accordingly imply that more the
judges more will be the cases filed before them to fill the additional judicial
time available? Would more judges therefore have little or no impact on
clearing the huge arrears of court cases even if the situation is not worsened?
In this connection, a brief examination of the causes of judicial delays and
large pendency of cases would be relevant.
In a seminar on Judicial Reforms, President Pratibha Patil
had recently expressed serious concern on the long judicial delays and the emerging
“culture of the lynch mob”. Frustrated with poor police functioning and long
judicial delays, people, it appeared, were being driven to take the law into
their own hands by even beating persons to death whom they viewed as criminals.
Equally concerned with the problem of judicial delays, Chief
Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, was of the view that lack of “proper and
good governance” was one of the important causes in driving litigants in larger
numbers to the judiciary for relief. This was resulting in huge number of court
cases and consequent delays in their disposal. The present size of the Judiciary
and the number of judges in the courts being unable to cope with the rising
tide of cases had to be suitably raised.
The number of pending cases (as on 30th June
2007) was reported to be 37.1 lakh in High Courts and 2.5 crore in the lower
courts. As against the present sanctioned strength of 792 judges in High Courts
and 15,399 judges in lower courts, the additional requirement is 1,539 more
judges for the High Courts and 18,479 more judges for the lower courts. In
effect, the strength of the judiciary would have to be raised nearly three
times.
To increase the strength by three times would obviously mean
huge financial costs. It has also to be kept in mind that additional judges
would require additional PAs/peons/process servers, police personnel and, what
is more, land and additional buildings. Can our present financial situation
bear such massive additional expenditure? If not, what could be some other
reasonable way out? May be it would be more advisable and desirable to get
litigants to file lesser number of court cases in regular courts by adopting
some rational system of scrutiny of complaints and petitions seeking legal
relief.
Presently there appear to be far too many petty cases
involving minor or technical breaches of law clogging the wheels of justice.
Justice Anand, former CJI, had once in cited the case of a poor boy arrested
for stealing three cigarette packets and languishing in jail as an under trial
as there was none to bail him out! Another unfortunate case cited was of an
under trial prisoner arrested for alleged crime of gambling from whom the total
cash recovered was only one rupee and ten paise!!
My own study (while posted in the Union Home Ministry in
mid-60s) of the judicial workload of Delhi Courts in view of their demand for
larger number of additional magistrates also showed that there were far too
many minor cases pending in the courts which could have well been dealt with on
the spot by mobile courts. Of the several lakh pending cases only five per cent
or so related to criminal offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the
balance 95 per cent, were for breaches of the provisions of scores of other
miscellaneous laws, such as Motor Vehicles Act, Closure of Shops &
Establishment Act, Public Nuisance offences under the Delhi Police Acts,
Weights and Measures Act, Prevention of cruelty to Animals Act, etc. etc. Bulk
of the cases booked under these Acts hardly merited regular court trials. These
could have been disposed of by mobile courts on the spot. Regular courts need
not have been flooded with such cases as most of these hardly served the real
intention behind the relevant legislations.
For example, thousands of cases had been filed against horse
cart owners under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act. Their “offences”
were for causing “cruelty” to the horses by alleged overloading by a few kgs
than the legally permissible load limit. During a visit to the Tis Hazari
Courts, the accused said they had been coming here for manyl months as on each
hearing their cases got adjourned for one reason or the other. Being daily
workers, they lost incomes and starved on the day of every such hearing. They
asked if this was not greater cruelty to the horses, as the animals too starved
on those dates. In any case, the horse owners knew the actual load carrying
capacity of their horses and could ill-afford to be cruel to them as their
livelihood depended on them.
Under the Motor Vehicles Act, lakhs of cases had been booked
and a simple disposal method devised. On every hearing a court clerk or a peon
stamped the court verdict on the order sheet of each case file with the words
“accused appears, pleads guilty, fined rupees X”. Similarly thousands of Food
Adulteration Act cases pending for months related to only adulteration of milk
with water. These got adjourned repeatedly due to the non-appearance of the
accused persons. Summons could not be served as the addresses given by the
accused were generally false. Any attempt to trace them turned out to be a wild
goose chase. Thus considerable court time was wasted in the disposal of these
cases.
The problem of large volume of court cases under these
numerous laws had arisen as the law enforcement Inspectors were required to
file a certain minimum number of cases every week/fortnight. The emphasis, as a
proof of good performance of duty, by them was on the quantitative and not on
the quality aspects of prosecutions. The Inspectors concerned, therefore, tried
to prove their merit by flooding the regular courts with thousands of cases
involving only minor or technical violations of the laws. To protect themselves
from harassment by the Inspectors, the shopkeepers in some markets stated that
they regularly pay fixed amounts or “haftas”
to different categories of Inspectors. Some kind of MoU had been devised to
limit prosecutions only to the number of cases required to be filed by each
inspector for their career advancement.
After conclusion of the study, no additional magistrates
were found necessary. The Delhi Administration, on the other hand, was advised
to take recourse to mobile court system for better enforcement of the minor
laws and petty offences. That system, though introduced then, does not seem to
be now in vogue.
Once, more judges and magistrates are appointed and thus
more judicial time is available for deciding cases, there is every possibility
of the courts being flooded with larger number of petty and minor cases. The
MoU between the law enforcement Inspectors and the shopkeepers or other
professional offenders mentioned earlier would be suitably revised upwards for
filing many more cases to keep the expanded judiciary also submerged with petty
cases. It needs to be emphasized that the judiciary is hardly at fault for the
huge number of cases and long delays in their disposal. Since bulk of the
litigation is initiated by law enforcement agencies of the Central and State
governments they have to take care to avoid overloading the judiciary with
petty cases.
The emphasis should shift from mere number to the quality of
aspect of cases for proper law enforcement. Further, to prevent court
litigations the quality of governance has also to improve. Once people have
greater faith and confidence in the government of the day they may not
unnecessarily knock the doors of the judiciary. Presently, the judiciary enjoys
far greater respect and confidence of the people and hence its problem of
mounting case work load. However, increasing the number of judges may be only a
short-term and partial remedy. The real and long-term remedy would be to take
care of the other important aspects mentioned earlier i.e. prevention of
uncalled for litigation through good governance and rational ways of law enforcement.---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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