'In'Justice

There are 52,000 Cases pending in the Supreme Court, 40 Lakh Cases in the High Courts and hold your breath nearly 2.6 Crore Cases pending in the Lower Courts.

It takes an average 15 years to dispose of a case in India (and that if one is optimistic)

There are 3,000 vacancies for Judges in various courts across the country.

The biggest litigator is the Government, which is either a plaintiff or a defendant in 60% of the cases. This is  because various government officials either violate the law, or apply the rules unevenly or where the public violate government laws.

Then there are frivolous cases, that should never have been accepted in the first instances.

Our justice system do not have sufficient provision for the judge mediating a settlement. The scope for plea bargaining is also very limited in scope. Add to this adjournments taken by the plaintiff or defendant or their lawyers for ridiculous reasons ( I have first hand experience of this when I was a young Sales Officer with HPCL. My lawyer one day told me that he is taking an adjournment in a case involving my company because 'his 5 year old daughter had a parent-teacher meeting scheduled in her school'!!!).

The ratio of Judge to Population in India is the lowest in the world. We have just 10.5 judges per Million people, which compares poorly with 41.6 in Australia, 50.9 in UK and 75.2 in Canada.

Is there any wonder why our country is slipping into anarchy and lawlessness?

The obvious solution is to have more courts, appoint more judges, computerize the whole system, screen the filing of the cases and have a time bound appeal system.

But the Government which has to fund this is least interested as it suits them because they have a vested interest. In the 60% of the pending cases where the Government is involved, majority of them are cases where it is the defendant. It suits them to delay the case as the plaintiff gets plain tired of fighting the might of the Government and in many cases dies much before a verdict is given. We see the ridiculous situation of the country in a crisis due to a case that has not even come up for hearing in the case of the CVC for 20 years!!. The Godhra accused who were left off were in the jail for 9 years and there are thousands of undertrials who are languishing in the jail similarly till their cases are disposed off. Recently a Kerala Ex Minister was sent to jail for One Year Rigorous Imprisonment in a case that dates back to 1980s. And he was just given one year RI against the original punishment of 5 years RI because the SC said the case is 20 years old!! Eh! What has that got to do with reducing the sentence? We have cases where electoral malpractice cases are disposed off after the tenure of a particular Lok Sabha or State Assembly. We see MPs and MLA's being disqualified after they have ceased to be MPs and MLA's. What about the legality of the various laws passed using their votes in the Parliament and Assemblies, where they should not have been there in the first place? Then there are cases against Government Servants, Ministers pending for want of sanction from the Authorities. This sanction process was set up to prevent non serious complaints against them that can impede their work. But every crooked minister or govt. employee has taken advantage of this immunity. Recently CBI asked the case against Quttrochi to be closed because it has taken 25 years!!! The Bhopal Gas Compensation case is pending since 1983. The Sikh Riots cases are pending since 1984!!!

It is time a one time excercise is taken to dispose off uninmportant long pending cases on a war footing to clear the slate and make a new beginning.

The adage is that 'Justice delayed is justice denied'. But in India, we dont even claim that one will get justice even if it is delayed.