Issues in Judiciary

 Facts:

Supreme Court – With the State governments appointing political favourites to the public posts of government pleaders and law officers, the already beleaguered justice delivery system in the lower courts across the country has been further weakened.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” – goes the famous adage. Timely justice is therefore an integral part of the fundamental right to justice. However as many studies, including the 245th Law Commission Report, indicate that the Indian judicial system is unable to provide timely justice due to the huge backlog of cases.

Statistics show that as many as 3.20 crore cases continue to remain pending before various courts. Of these as many as 40 lakh cases are pending before the Indian HCs, while close to a crore are pending before the subordinate courts. The main reasons for the pendency of cases include the – chronic administration under capacity and under-resourced judiciary.

This backlog results in the dilution of the right to access timely justice and an erosion of the rule of law. This eventually affects peoples’ faith in the judicial system. Further, judicial system is highly costly and not pro-poor despite constitutional arrangements and functioning of bodies like NALSA.

Example: A special court sentenced gangster Abu Salem and others for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. It took nearly 25 years for the Indian state to convict and sentence at least some of those who had perpetrated one of the bloodiest acts of terrorism on Indian soil. Justice delayed this much is justice compromised.

Remedies:

Law Commission of India in its 230th report has also offered a long list of measures to deal with the pendency of cases. These include:

Case Management System—

Supreme court of India is the “guardian of the Constitution”. Under, Article 32 it acts as protector of Fundamental Rights of every Indian citizen.

Article 131 gives exclusive jurisdiction to solve disputes between states and centre or between states on all matters. Article 137 provides powers to review its own judgements. SC also has advisory jurisdiction under 143 on matter of constitution and law to President of India.

If constitution repeals “Article 132-134” (Appellate jurisdiction), then, only the above mentioned constitutional load will remain on Supreme Court. Indian constitution attempts to provide a panacea for the many political, economic and social ills the country had been plagued with. Supreme Court of India in its constitutional field has yet to register 500 cases a year.

So, if Appellate jurisdiction is repealed, India will not need 26 judges of SC to deal with just 500 cases a year. Size of SC will reduce drastically.

Though, SC is working slow, appellate jurisdiction is vital for public remedies because most cases are registered under Article 226 and not under Article 32 for constitutional remedy.

Pending cases (Backlog) remedies for Courts :

Most of the 50,000 and more cases pending in the Supreme court are appeals from the high courts or appellate tribunals. They might have trundled from the subordinate courts to the apex court, spending years and bundles of money. Even after the Supreme Court delivers its judgment, there are two more stages to challenge its final word. They are review petitions and ‘curative petitions’.

Court in its judgment, Rupa Hurra vs Ashok Hurra devised ‘curative petition’, It allowed the disappointed litigants to return to it even after losing the review petition. A curative petition must be accompanied by a recommendation of a “senior” advocate stating that the case requires re-examination as there was violation of the principles of natural justice in the earlier decisions. The curative petition has to be first circulated to a bench of three senior-most judges. They will decide by a majority that the case should be re-examined. Only then will the case be heard by the judges who heard the case originally. Such strict conditions were imposed to prevent a floodgate of curative petitions.