“May Lord!  it has been a long time, now I want Justice”.

                                                                                                By-Anshul Sharma

It is true that “Patience is a conquering virtue.” But question is “till when”? till when our legal rights gets disposed off or till when a person himself get disposed off from this world of justice? The voice for justice is hushed under heavy bundles of files and look! what our hon’ble courts who are considered as the third pillar of democracy are doing, just interpreting the same laws reiteratively which has the same conclusion as prior. For paragon, principle of constitutional morality is implied which does not require wasting time on this thing again. And then we say that the Indian legal system is facing a huge backlog of cases.

According to National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), the five states which account for the highest pendency are Uttar Pradesh (61.58 lakh), Maharashtra (33.22 lakh), West Bengal (17.59 lakh), Bihar (16.58 lakh) and Gujarat (16.45 lakh) are pending.  While 2.84 crore cases are pending in the subordinate courts, the backlog clogging the High Courts and Supreme Court (SC) is 43 lakh and 57,987 cases, respectively. Many of these cases are pending for more than 10 years. Below are the approximate number of cases pending in Supreme Court, High Courts and District and Subordinate courts in India. Matter of this crux is firstly, the number of judges is quiet insufficient i.e. there are approx. 21,000 judges only, who are in current present in the nation. The current Judge to Population ratio is 10 to 1 million. The Law Commission report in 1987 recommends at least 50 judges to 1 million public. Also, the population has increased by 25 crore since 1987 and according to report: more than half of the seats are vacant. so, as to eliminate this major flaw, recruitment should increase.

Secondly, Indian judiciary has insufficient resources. Both, the Center and the States are not interested in increasing their spending with respect to the judiciary. Budgetary allocations for the judiciary are a pathetic 0.1% to 0.4% of the whole budget. India needs more courts and more benches.

Thirdly, once the judgement is passed, people who are dissatisfied with the judgements reiteratively file either review petition or Public Interest Litigation. This is a major drawback that instead of focusing on the obsolete cases, the courts are engaged in the current ones.

Fourthly, excessive time period is given for searching & providing an evidence, non-availability of witness, police officers, and advocates during trial leads to major delays in the court in regards of passing judgements.

Fifthly, as discuss before, interpreting same laws again & again with same conclusion results in wastage of time.

Crux is looking simple but is much more complex than it seems, as  it have various adverse effect on nation as well as on its citizens such as-

·         The common man’s faith in the justice system is at an all-time low.

·         Denies the poor man and under trial prisoners their due of justice.

·         Economic reforms remain only on paper without speedier justice system.

·         Foreign investors are increasingly doubtful about the timely delivery of justice, which affects the success of various programs like ‘Make in India’.

·         Judiciary is unable to handle the “avalanche” of litigation. Judiciary becomes overworked and lose its efficiency. Justice delayed is justice denied and Justice hurried is justice buried.

So, it is essential look into this problem, as man who deceased before his/her pending justice, his soul is saying “May Lord!it has been a long time, now I want justice”.