There is shortage of judges of High Courts on national level, J&K High Court included. At the same time, there is enormous pendency of cases before these courts. The question is whether justice will be done to the petitioners even after years of waiting. Twenty four High Courts in the country are short of 470 Judges. At the beginning of the year, the shortage was of 443 Judges, while in the later part of 2015 it was 392, according to the data available with the Law Ministry.
Recently a rather disturbing phenomenon has been witnessed in which the judiciary and executive are having some differences of opinion in regard to appointment of judges. Parliament had enacted the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act to do away with the over two-decade old collegiums system where judges appoint judges. The Apex Court struck down this law. A Supreme Court bench, desiring transparency of collegiums system asked the Centre to redraft the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) in consultation with the States.
The MoP is a document which guides the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the 24 High Courts. At present, there are two MoPs — one for the Apex Court and the other for the High Courts. The issue has remained unresolved as a result of which appointment of judges to the High Courts could not be made.
We are hopeful that with the Ministry of Law passing into the hands of senior BJP Minister and a legal luminary, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the matter will be taken up with the SC and a common ground between the Government and the judiciary on the issue of appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the High Courts will be found. This is an urgent matter taking into view the enormous pendency which the High Courts in the country are required to handle.
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