RITU SHARMA
JAMMU: The basic principle of Indian judiciary is that 99 per cent accused go scot free but even one innocent shall not be punished. With alarming increase in pendency of cases in judiciary, due to shortage of Judges, followed by dates over dates added with long dates varying upto two months and sometime more is proving fatal in delivering justice. The situation takes far grimmer dimensions when exemptions are given to the accused persons from personal appearance on one pretext or the other; sometimes on filmy grounds. It is nothing but a cruel joke with petitioners. By giving undue benefits to the accused, the complainants and the witnesses, who remain present in the Courts after a long date, feel dejected and depressed when a new date is slapped on their face for non appearance of accused, which enjoy exemption from the personal appearance given by Courts.
At times, the Courts issue bailable and nonbailable warrants for non appearance of witnesses on due date and sometimes dismiss the cases on account of absence of complainants, which enhances the morale of accused, who take maximum advantages from loop holes of Court proceedings .
Given this scenario, many times the complainants lose faith to get justice and are forced to compromise with the accused and sometimes let the case go dismissed to save themselves from further harassment. On both such counts, the concerned Courts boast of deciding cases to their credit, ignoring the fact that fate of these cases had not been decided by them but got ‘settled’, either due to harassment to plantiff or witnesses’ losing their faith in judiciary.
Chief Justice of India T. S Thakur recently expressed his grave concern over increased number of pendency, which he attributed mainly to shortage of Judges. Only today, he put the requirement of clearing pendency to 70,000 Judges. Keeping in view pendency of cases, it is time for the Chief Justice of India and Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir to issue advisories to the Judges of subordinate Courts, who are used to giving long dates and exempting the accused persons some time on flimsy grounds, to be discrete. Such exemptions generally cause harassment to complainants and witnesses, who appear in the Courts. This obviously defeats the very idea of justice system.
The top judiciary, especially the Chief Justice, will have to work out a mechanism and put in place guidelines for giving exemptions, dates after dates and suggest ways and means for time-bound judgements. The subordinate judiciary is to be impressed upon to desist from getting the cases disposed off either through compromises or withdrawal of cases; or for that matter dismissal of cases due to non appearance.
70,000 judges required to clear pendency: CJI
Cuttack: Continuing to express concern over low judge-population ratio in the country, Chief Justice of India T S Thakur on Sunday said access to justice was a fundamental right and governments cannot afford to deny it to the people.
After an emotional outburst over the issue in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a conference in New Delhi recently, the CJI once again raised the matter while addressing a large gathering of legal luminaries here on the occasion of centennial celebrations of the circuit bench of the High Court. “While we (judiciary) remain keen to ensure that judges’ appointments are made quickly, the machinery involved with the appointment of judges continue to grind very slowly,” Justice Thakur said, adding around 170 proposals for appointment of HC judges were now pending with the government. Noting that the matter was brought to the notice of the Prime Minister recently with a plea to make the appointments quickly, he said people cannot be denied justice.
“Access to justice is a fundamental right and the government cannot afford to deny the people their fundamental right,” he said.
Shortage of judges is one of the formidable challenges the judiciary is facing in the country now, the CJI said adding, out of some 900 sanctioned posts of judges in different High Courts of the country, there are over 450 vacancies which need to be filled up immediately.
Dwelling on the poor judge-population ratio, Justice Thakur said while the Law Commission of India in 1987 had suggested for having 44,000 judges to effectively tackle the then number of pending cases, the country today has only 18,000 judges.
“Thirty years down the line we continue to work with depleted strength. If you go by the number of people that have been added to the population, we may now require more than 70,000 judges to clear the pending cases,” he said.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who was present as one of the guests of honour on the occasion, said his government was providing adequate financial support for improving the judicial infrastructure in the state.
“We are committed to the overall strengthening and development of justice delivery system in Odisha,” Patnaik said.
Emphasising on “mutual respectability”, the other guest of honour Justice Dipak Misra of the Supreme Court said the Orissa High Court has a glorious past and everybody must strive to live up to it.
At least ten judges of the Supreme Court and several judges of Calcutta, Patna and Jharkhand High Courts are participating in the centennial celebrations, which will continue for a week with seminars, conferences and cultural programmes lined up for the occasion.
