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gopal singh's Blogs >> ponder over it settlement of cases in courts

Disposal of cases in courts
India has the bad reputation for pending cases in courts (over three crores across India). According to the NDTV report on 16th August 2009 no less than a person like the Prime Minister of India, Dr.Manmohan Singh while addressing Annual Conference of the Chief Justices and the Chief Ministers of all states in India was stated to have given the information that India has world’s largest backlog of cases pending in Indian courts. He was further reported to have said that there were about 3000 posts of judges lying vacant due to delay in recruitment and suggested to the Chief Justice of India to fill up these vacancies. As on the date of report of NDTV, the cases pending in various courts are as follows:
1) Supreme Court of India----52,000 cases
2) All High Courts in India ----40 lakh cases
3) All Trial Courts in India ----2.7 crores cases
One astounding fact which emerged out of the conference was that in the
High Court of New Delhi alone it could take up to 466 years to clear the back log of pending cases. There fore for the speedy disposal of certain cases there were several suggestions. One important proposal was creation of Gram Nyayalayas (village courts). It was pending with the government for a long time
According to Hon’ble Justice Sri.Ashok Kumar Ganguly a Supreme Court Judge was said to have published an article titled ‘Judicial Reforms’. He was said to have suggested many things for the speedy disposal of pending cases like:
• Full utilization of court working hours
• Cases with identical matters to be clubbed
• Time limit for delivering judgments
• To extend the court working hours by at least half an hour
• Length of oral arguments to be restricted to not more than one and half hours
• Judgments to be free from ambiguity
• Lawyers not to resort to frequent strikes under any circumstances
• Computerization of records in all courts
It is happy augury and pertinent to record here that Justice Tamada Gopala Krishna High Court Judge of Andhra Pradesh who was noted for deciding cases expeditiously and without ambiguity created sort of a record by finally deciding 103 cases (60 cases before lunch hour and 43 cases after lunch hour). These cases were reported to have belonged to the years 2002 and 2003. The hon’ble judge was reported to have finally decided 1435 cases out of 1800 cases (which came up before him for hearing in April,2009) with in ten days. There are few more judges who are equally dynamic and quick in deciding the cases. They are silent crusaders. I firmly believe that many others should take a cue from such examples.