M J Antony: To turn the tide

There is a renewed attempt at the apex court level to tweak procedures to speed up the disposal of cases

The mid-year appraisal of the state of judiciary, released by the Supreme Court recently, does not show a perceptible improvement in its capacity to tackle the workload accumulated over the years. However, the new chief justice, S H Kapadia, who took over the reins in the second half of the year, has held forth significant procedural reforms to reduce the arrears of cases, at least at the apex level.

After studying the problems faced by the institution, the judge has stated that he has made “an attempt to revitalise the system, the result of which would be evidenced before long”. One notable step, he cites, is to avoid manual intervention in the listing of cases. Till some time back, there were rampant allegations that benches could be “fixed” by certain lawyers with the help of touts and officials of the registry. This is a primeval mode of corruption, which has received a severe blow with computerisation. Now the cases are pigeonholed according to the subject, the statute involved and the bench assigned to hear such cases. Despite comments by compulsive cynics, the system in general is working well.

Another development is the establishment of a department of information and statistics to create an information bank relating to case management. This department will collect, compile and store information. Lack of statistics has been a serious handicap for decades and researchers had to go by inadequate data, released selectively by the court, to arrive at suggestions and conclusions. The judiciary is an institution that functions in darkness and only lawyers can hope to operate in the grim alleys. If statistics are available to the public, the ills of the institution can be diagnosed by competent persons like jurists, law faculties and management experts. Therefore, the chief justice should facilitate information-sharing with researchers and commentators. This should not wait for another Right to Information petition, with bitter consequences faced by the predecessor of the present chief justice.

For the first time, notice to opposite parties in commercial matters can be served using the electronic mode. This will go a long way in arresting the delay owing to the archaic process of serving notice, which pushes back hearings for months together. Email facility is an addition to the traditional modes. One waits for the day when this facility, provided to business houses, will be extended to ordinary litigants.

The new chief justice has a different take on the arrears problem, for which the judiciary has been blamed by the executive, parliamentarians and the public. The judge writes: “Till date, nobody has given a thought to what actually ‘arrears’ mean and whether the term ‘pendency’ falls within the contours of arrears. A case filed in the morning cannot – and should not be – in the evening fall in the category of arrears. Pragmatic and holistic views need to be taken. A case pending, at least, for a year in a court by no means can be termed as ‘arrears’ but should be termed as a pending case and this dichotomy is required to be applied in order to assess actual arrears of cases.”

At present, the reforms are confined mainly to the Supreme Court. Some high courts and lower courts are moving at a snail’s pace, especially in computerisation and dissemination of information to the public. It is obvious that the traditional dark forces are at work to thwart any peek into the courts’ working. Many courts and tribunals fail to take the simple step of uploading their orders and judgments.

Meanwhile, the figures released by the Supreme Court present a grim picture. Though the sanctioned strength is 895, there are 285 vacancies in 21 high courts. The Allahabad High Court has the maximum number of vacancies, 87 out of 160, followed by Punjab and Haryana (22), and Gujarat and Calcutta High Courts, 19 each. The subordinate judiciary is no better. There are 2,980 vacancies though the total number should be 16,990.

The total pendency in the high courts is 4,108,555, with the Allahabad High Court leading with 952,862. The figure for the subordinate courts is 27,374,908. The Supreme Court has 55,717 matters pending. If connected matters are excluded, the pendency is 33,362, according to the new premise of the chief justice. Out of the total, 19,680 matters are less than a year old. Therefore, the arrears are 36,037 cases, according to the Supreme Court. The report for the next quarter will show how the new policies have impacted the docket problem.