The President, Pranab Mukherjee is rightly disturbed by the huge backlog of cases pending with the courts in the country. The mind-boggling figure is around 31 million. Imagine the stupendous task lying before our judiciary. And judiciary is the guardian of our democracy. We cannot discuss the question of why such a large number of court cases do we have in the country. After all those who feel justice has not been done to them will knock at the court of law, a cherished option which the constitution of the country allows. Everybody knows that real justice is very rare but near justice is with what we are reconciled as human beings.
The real question is why such an enormous pendency? That is what the President and the entire nation is worried about. There could be many reasons. We have inadequacy of qualified legal manpower. We have not resources enough to create extended judicial structure commensurate with the bulk of population. Above all, we have complicated legal and social system and our laws are not adequate enough to deal with the issues that arise.
India is a developing country. To be precise it is a developing sub-continent. Given the heterogeneity of our nation, we need to cater to the needs of so many identities not just the ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural. India is called a mosaic of cultures, communities and faiths. In a country where ethnicities and sub-ethnicities are further denominated into various groups, each group and each identity wants to assert itself in one way or the other. The quest for assertion also creates feeling of discrimination right or wrong. There are no cut and dried rules for deciding issues of discrimination, division, distortion etc. when we deal with social phenomenon. Thus people find resort to judicial dispensation as the only way out.
It will be reminded that our judicial system does provide for legal support to persons who are unable to seek justice on their own. Some people have benefitted from it but the offer of free legal advice has to be streamlined and made effective. We are confident that the CJI will find time to have a look at this provision and make it simple and effective for those who are in need of free legal advice because they cannot afford it on their own.
Addressing the Advocates’ Association of Western India, the President said it was important that lawyers were fully knowledgeable of their profession and that they felt secure and confident in what they were doing. Applauding the role of the Chief Justice of India in introducing judicial reforms so as to minimise the number of pending cases, the President said that much more needed to be done and that we should not rest content with what we are planning to do. Regretting that delay in justice was almost denial of justice, the President exhorted the lawyers not to seek adjournments frequently because that is the main cause of delay in disposing off the cases. Adjournments could be asked for where these are unavoidable but frequently resorting to adjournments causes delay and makes justice an expensive thing for poorer sections of people. Concluding his address with appreciation of the reformative measures adopted by the Chief Justice of India, the President reminded the lawyers’ fraternity that they owe a duty to the nation and the duty was that no citizen of India was denied justice and fair deal.
The question of huge pendency has already been under close consideration of the Chief Justice of the State High Court and he has taken a number of reformative steps and the progress in reducing the number of pending cases is being regularly monitored by the High Court. Of course the entire deck cannot be cleaned in one sweep howsoever big and broad based it may be. A promising step taken by the Government is that of strengthening the Panchayati Raj. Effort is being made to settle cases maximally by village panchayats so that the need of knocking at superior courts does not arise. The Panchayati Raj is rightly thinking of empowering the panchayats to the extent that the contesting parties find Panchayat decisions as highly justifiable. But we shall have to wait for some time to note and get the feed back of the efficacy of Panchayats in reducing the number of pendency cases.
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