Reforming judiciary

Reserving judgments adding to delays and backlogs

India’s clogged justice system has acquired global notoriety, which plays no small part in the investment decisions of multinationals. On Monday, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud sent a wakeup call to the higher judiciary by flagging the proclivity of high-court judges to reserve judgments for a long time after completing the hearing. Seeking information from chief justices on details of cases where judgments had been reserved for three months, he said he had discovered there were cases where judgments had been reserved for as long as 10 months. Worse, he noted, several judges partly heard the matters before