Need to frame guidelines to bring uniformity in judicial officers' evaluation: HC

The Delhi High Court today said there was a need to frame guidelines to bring in greater uniformity and transparency in evaluating the working of judicial officers in the subordinate judiciary.

The high court said in the present evaluation system, the judicial officers' work and performance is supervised and graded by a committee, comprising of three high court judges. However, it has a drawback of not having any uniform set of rules or guidelines that all appraisal committees have to follow.

A bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sunil Gaur said the directions passed by it regarding formulation of criteria for uniform grading of judicial officers should be suitably incorporated in the form of guidelines for future implementation and the registrar general of the high court take appropriate action to place the papers before the Chief Justice in this regard.

The court's directions came in a judgement on a plea of Additional District and Sessions Judge Sujata Kohli, whose petition has reflected long-standing grievances of many senior judges in subordinate judiciary who felt that the promotion policies for lower court judges adopted by various high courts including the Delhi HC were "arbitrary and non-transparent".

The bench held that the Full Court resolutions of April 28, 2009, which was modified on January 15, 2010, and the later resolution of January 27, 2011, in which they prescribe that for appointment to the post of district judge, the judicial officer concerned should have been graded 'A' in the preceding five years, is "not arbitrary".

It said Kohli's grievance that she was arbitrarily denied knowledge of the annual confidential report (ACR) grading of other officers, is also without merit.

The bench said it was of the opinion that to inject greater uniformity, objectivity and some measure of transparency and predictability in the ACR grading and several issues should be kept in mind by the appraisal evaluation authorities.

It said the judicial officer concerned should be awarded marks or points, maximum of 100, which would include 20 per cent for quality of judgements, 25 per cent for disposal ratio, 20 per cent for total number of final judgments delivered in contested matters.

It said every judicial officer claiming disposal targets, based on a maximum of 10 per cent may be awarded for timeliness, promptness in delivery of judgments, disposal of old cases, not taking leave or clubbing leave with vacations and the balance 25 per cent may be awarded by the appraising high court judge/committee on the basis of interaction/inspection.

The bench said no officer should be subject to appraisal of any one judge or committee for more than two consecutive years as this would eliminate unconscious biases in favour and against the officers.

The high court establishment, through the registrar general, had earlier said that the high court has to fix criteria for appointments in the subordinate judiciary as it is the "best judge" to evaluate the working of an officer.

It had also "vehemently denied that criteria for promotion to the post of District and Sessions Judge adversely affected progression of many Additional District Judges as alleged".