Huge case backlog clogs India's courts
By Neeta Lal June 28, 2008 Asian Times Online

DELHI - India's woefully underfunded court system, with its shortfall of judges but excess of corrupt lawyers, is also saddled with a gargantuan backlog of 29.2 million cases pending across hundreds of subordinate state-level courts, 21 high courts and the Supreme Court.

According to figures released recently by the Indian Supreme Court - the country's highest judicial authority - out of this mind-boggling number, over 25.4 million cases are pending in subordinate courts, 3.7 million cases in various high courts while the Supreme Court is stuck with 45,887 cases awaiting justice.
According to the Supreme Court's findings, among the states, Uttar Pradesh - India's most populous state with a population of 180 million - leads the pack with 4.8 million cases awaiting trial followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat with 4 million and 3.4 million cases, respectively.

This huge backlog of unresolved cases, experts claim, is directly proportional to a lack of judges. So, while Uttar Pradesh has a vacancy of 521 judges against a required roster of 2,172, Maharashtra suffers from a shortfall of 376 against the current strength of 1,897 posts.

Consequently, during the last quarter of 2007, over 3.5 million cases were filed in subordinate courts across the country, out of which only some 3.3 million were tried. For the same period, 21 High Courts were able to clear 326,000 cases out of a total of 368,000, with the remaining cases adding to the already huge backlog for the quarter. A major fallout of this unsavory situation is that millions of Indians are currently awaiting justice.

According to legal experts, there are multifarious reasons for the current mess of the Indian judicial system. First and foremost, poor pay for judges causes a huge talent crunch. Unsurprisingly, according to the 120th Law Commission Report, India's population-to-judge ratio is one of the lowest in the world. While the United States and Britain have about 150 judges for every million of its population, India has only 10 judges for the same number.

In terms of pay parity, India's legal professionals are the worst off. The chief justice (considered the highest legal authority) takes home a paltry 33,000 rupees (roughly US$800) per month, while a Supreme Court judge draws 30,000 rupees and a High Court judge gets 25,000 rupees. This is a fraction of what senior judges draw in the Western world.

Unsurprisingly, such poor pay scales have triggered corruption, widespread bribery and political interference which denies millions their right to a fair trial. According to the global anti-corruption group Transparency International, as many as 77% of the Indians believe the country's judiciary is corrupt and 36% acknowledged coughing up bribes to the judiciary last year.

"An estimated [$600 billion] was the amount Indians shelled out as bribes to the judiciary, higher than the bribes paid out in any other sector in the country," says "Global Corruption Report 2007: Corruption in Judicial Systems". "The average amount of money [roughly $90] paid in bribes by a household in India in the past 12 months was maximum in the judiciary as compared to other sectors."

Elaborating on reasons for mounting corruption in the Indian judiciary, the report says delays due to a shortage of judges and complex legal procedures are propelling Indians towards undesirable measures to get justice. "The loss of confidence in the judiciary is mainly due to the long gestation period of litigation, with millions of cases pending disposal ... This backlog leads to long adjournments and prompts people to pay to speed up the process ... The degree of delays and corruption has led to cynicism about the justice system. People seek shortcuts through bribery and favors, leading to further unlawful behavior," reads the report.

According to Ramesh Thakur, a Mumbai-based Indian civil rights lawyer, "The current crunch of good lawyers and judges can be calamitous for the Indian judicial system. These professionals are indispensable for the courts to function efficiently and render speedy justice to litigants. So the government must step in to correct this crunch. This is the least one expects in the world's largest democracy."

Experts also underscore the urgent need for standards and benchmarks to screen frivolous Public Interest Litigations (PILs) with which Indian courts are currently deluged. This is vital to ensure that only the genuine ones with a justifiable cause of action based on judicially manageable standards are taken up. In this regard, it is suggested that the Supreme Court set up a special screening cell to deal with PIL matters and thoroughly scrutinize them.

"We need a three-tier system to test an applicant's credentials and correctness of details so that frivolous petitions can be dispensed with forthright," says Meena Ahuja, a human rights activist. "Unfortunately, in India, PILs are often used by politicians as a vehicle to settle political scores. And this delays speedy justice by clogging up the entire system," she adds.

In a scenario where the Indian judiciary was already hard-pressed to deliver justice as speedily as required, and at the same time, maintain high quality of work, pesky PILs only add to the system's nuisance value, not to mention inordinate delays, meaningless expenditure and harassment of citizens.

In other words, unless the Indian government employs urgent measures to revitalize its moribund judicial system, millions of its citizens will not receive timely justice. According to the Supreme Court's findings, the government also needs to tackle the current manpower shortfall, inadequate infrastructure and poorly training and pay for judges. Until these issues are resolved, Indian citizens will continue to grapple with protracted judicial delays and injustices.

The Judiciary - Detention, delay, death

By Amit Chamaria (freelance journalist. amitchamaria@yahho.co.in)
23 November, 2007 Countercurrents.org

For its dialogue -'Tarikh Pe Tarikh' (another date after a date -a hearing after another hearing. ) a
film "Damini" drew much applause at one time across the country for well presentation of the inside story of the courtrooms. In fact, apart from other anomalies, the word 'delay' has become part and parcel of the Indian judicial system. More over, very often many undertrial prisoners are 'detained' more time in jails than they are supposed to undergo for the crime committed. There are several instances that undertrial inmates have 'died' during the course of long and troublesome trial periods. Presently, these 3 'D' - 'Delay', 'Detention' and 'Death' of the Judicial System need to be examined from a sociological angle. Available reports substantially reveal that the 3 'D' are confined to certain section of the society.

Contextually, a latest report of 2006 says that total population of undertrial inmates in country is 217130 including 7852 females at the end of 2004. They are well above 60 percent of the total prisoners. According to the National Crime Record Bureau reports (under the Ministry of Home affairs) published in November 2006, 44470 undertrials are from SC community
(20% of the total) and 25073 from ST community (11.5% of the total). Overcrowding in jails is not a new thing. But it should be a matter of scanning that why Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar, have been reported to have much overcrowding of prisons with occupancy rate 300.9%, 194.5%, 164.5%, and 153.3%, respectively. Jharkand has recorded maximum over
crowding of its jails in the country. This is because of the predominant percentage of undertrials prisoners there, counted at 71.13%. While Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar have percentage of undertrails at 48.9, 71.8, and 82.8, respectively. It further reveals the fact that these four states are most socially and educationally backward and tribal dominated excluding Bihar. As data reveals that the three tribal dominated states -Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa- have noticeable percentage of under trials belonging to Scheduled tribes and Scheduled Castes community. The percentage of STs in these states is 26, 31, 16.7 and that of for SCs 21.3, 18, 20.5 respectively. But Jharkand has maximum number of STs undertrials, that is, 3225. Bihar is not far behind in this respect.  The percentage of SCs under trials there is 23.33 (i. e. 6389 in number).

On the other hand, undoubtedly, Haryana and Gujarat - the most developed states in the country have also higher percentage of undertrials inmates registered at 61.6 and 62.2 with jail occupancy rate too high at 214.2% and 208% respectively.
Surprisingly, the two states have significant percentage of SCs and STs under trials. SC and ST undertrials percentage in Haryana is 23.87 and 10.23 and in Gujarat 25.64 and 26 respectively.  In addition to this, among the total undertrials inmates, 172572 or 80 % are illiterate or little literate (below class X). And astoundingly, all above-mentioned states have fair number of illiterates or little literate undertrials inmates. Needless to emphasize that the percentage of literacy among Dalits, Adivasi and most backward castes is very less as compared to rest of the society.

Further, among total undertrials, 2,069 have been  languishing for five years or more in different jails of the country. The highest number of such undertrial prisoners was reported from Bihar with a number of 628 undertrails (30.35% of total such type of inmates). These features provide ample testimony of what our judicial system is. Now, it may be easily concluded through a close scrutiny of the above data that the 3 ' D' are restricted to that segments of the society who are socially backward in all dimensions of the life and at the bottom line of the social hierarchy of the Varna system. And certainly, Dalits and Adivasi prominently fall in this category. After all, a convention seems to lend support to it as well- people are asked to
swear inside the courtroom by Gita --- a text that upholds ' Varna Ashram' -- that in a way goes to endorse the 3 'D' syndrome.