Addressing judicial logjam

That dispensation of justice is a daunting challenge in a situation where the functioning of the judicial system is hamstrung by a huge backlog of pending cases needs no elaboration. Judicial procrastination or justice delayed, as the proverbial saying goes, does, in effect, mean justice denied. Considering this, it is indeed a sordid picture about the state of the country's judicial system where some 1.35 million cases in the nature of civil dispute, as disclosed by the Law and Parliamentary Affair Minister in parliament last Tuesday, were lying pending before the courts at different tiers, as on June 30, 2015. This figure does not include the number of criminal cases that awaited verdict by the court at the close of the last fiscal. And such cases would also be quite large in number.

So far as the civil cases are concerned, the logjam at the level of district judges court is too heavy -- 1.12 million in number. The snail's pace at which the proceedings move about such cases baffles one even to make a speculation on the time by which their adjudication will be over. Meanwhile, more cases will be added to the list of the already pending ones. Verdicts by the district judges' courts will again not mean the end of the proceedings of such cases; the appeals against judgements delivered at such courts will, in most cases, be made with the higher courts -- the High Court and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. And the situation about pending cases before such higher courts of justice is no better than that of the district or lower courts. The High Court Division had already 86,000 civil cases that were awaiting judgement on June 30 last. And at the highest level of the country's judiciary -- the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court -- there were 12,669 pending cases until then.

Against this backdrop, there is a strong urgency for giving a befitting attention to dealing with the heavy overload in the courts. This is more so because effectiveness of the country's judicial system is now largely impaired by inordinate delays in legal verdicts. A myriad of issues are relevant to transactional efficiency here. The existing financial and human resources that are available with the country's judiciary are inadequate to cope with the increasing volume of cases. Overburdened judges are hardly in a position to review cases properly. Often the hearings are postponed. Judges taking evidence by hand, absence of effective system for listing and court assistants' fixing the date arrangements without having a proper appreciation of priorities, the practice of paying lawyers according to number of appearances and their recourse to delaying tactics in disposal of cases, can, to cite a few examples, be noted as constraints, further compounding the problems. Quality of judicial and law officials in the absence of facilities for periodic training to enhance skills necessary for understanding complex issues of law, particularly in its developing fields, does also hamper the dispensation of justice in time. In this situation, it is not difficult to understand why quality and timelines of justice available to the vast majority citizens remain very poor. The government needs to explore, on a priority basis, the ways for improving case management and to consider revising the organic law and procedural codes effectively to enhance the efficient processing of cases. Introduction of modern management information system should brook no delay. A synergy of actions thus merits an urgent attention so that the opportunities for delaying proceedings of cases are reduced.