Bangladesh's judiciary sees a gloomy future, as pending cases are making one of three organs of the state overburdened and unable to function properly.
Although various initiatives were taken on different occasions to solve this long-standing issue, the backlog of cases continues to rise.
Courts across the country, including the Appellate Division and the High Court Division of the Supreme Court, are burdened with 4.51 million cases, causing immense suffering for justice seekers.
According to the Supreme Court statistics, until December 31, 2024, a total of 31,120 cases were pending in the Appellate Division and 0.58 million cases in the High Court Division.
Apart from this, the lower judiciary alone is handling a staggering 3.89 million cases now while as many as 0.21 million cases are now under investigation.
The total number of pending cases in all the courts until December 31, 2023 stood at 4.29 million. Of them, 26,517 were in the Appellate Division, 0.54 million in the High Court Division and 3.72 million in the lower judiciary.
Pendency of the cases waste both time and money of the justice-seeking people. There is also a fear that justice might be denied due to the lengthy proceedings of the cases.
After assuming officer, Chief Justice Dr Syed Refaat Ahmed on September 21 last year outlined a roadmap for the judiciary. The roadmap presented at a gathering of the lower court judges mentioned that "insufficient number of judges comparing to the number of cases" is one of the main reasons for the backlog.
In the present context, in order to make the judiciary a strong institution, it is necessary to reform the organisational structure or organogram of the entire judiciary and appoint the required number of judges in proportion to the country's population and the number of cases, the Chief Justice added.
The Appellate Division has now only five judges, while High Court Division has 81 judges. Earlier, there were 93 judges, but 12 were relieved of the judicial duties after the fall of Sheikh Hasina.
Each of the Appellate Division judge is burdened with more than 6,220 cases whereas High Court Division judge deals with more than 7,279 cases on average as approximately 0.62 million cases are pending in both the divisions.
According to the report of the Judiciary Reform Commission, lower courts across the country have a total 2,254 judges. Among the judges, 319 are out of judicial activities and a total of 1,935 judges are functioning with the court proceedings.
