PIL Filed in SC to Double Judges' Strength, Implement Judicial Charter to Bring Down Pendency

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking “doubling” of the number of judges in High Courts and Subordinate Courts, and implementation of a judicial charter to decide the cases, including cases before lower courts, within three years.

The petition, filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, says a judicial charter is not only necessary to secure right to speedy justice but is also essential to control corruption, crime, casteism, communalism, regionalism, linguism, separatism, terrorism and fundamentalism. Further, the petition states that the Indian judiciary is suffering due to low manpower, as the number of judges per million population is less than 20.

It also highlights the statistics and number on the pendency of cases before various courts in hierarchy. “Lakhs of cases are pending before Tehsildar, SDM, ADM, CO, SOC, DDC for over 10 years on settled questions of law. People commit suicide (sic) when the cases remain pending for very long time, not to mention the mess they leave behind,” the plea reads.

The plea further enumerates instances where cases have been given more than 400 dates and stated that such incidences are not only against the spirit of the Constitution, but are also inhumane.

The PIL further lays emphasis on the importance of judiciary in an individual’s life. The petition stipulates three reasons for the pendency and the time that a case takes to reach to a conclusion: (i) lack of judicial infrastructure (ii) archaic laws/provisions of CPC-CrPC (iii) cunning lawyers and incompetent and inexperienced judges and judicial staff. And, therefore it even seeks to amend the provisions of IPC, CPC, CrPC, which the petition refers to as ‘archaic’, to avoid the consumption of time.

The cause of action accrued on October 25, 2009 when the Centre had promised to reduce pendency of cases from 15 years to three years but did nothing to implement the recommendations proposed by Law Commission of India reports, says the petition.

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