New Delhi, Dec 29 : Delayed disposal of cases amounts to denial of justice to litigants, former Supreme Court judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul said on Friday, while voicing concern over fewer judges than required.
In an interview with PTI, Justice Kaul, who demitted office on December 25, said there should not be any hesitation in experimenting with new ideas to deal with the huge backlog of cases from trial courts to the Supreme Court.
The number of cases pending in various courts in the country has crossed the five crore mark, the government had told the Rajya Sabha on July 20.
“As per data retrieved from the Integrated Case Management System (ICMIS) by the Supreme Court of India, as on July 1, there are 69,766 cases pending in the Supreme Court.
“Total number of cases pending in the high courts and the district and subordinate courts as on July 14 are 60,62,953 and 4,41,35,357 respectively, as per information made available on National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG),” Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had said in the upper house.
Justice Kaul said there was a need to deal with the situation. He said delayed disposal of cases amounted to denial of justice to common litigants.
“But what is to be done? Can a judge decide hundred cases in a day? No. Take the Supreme Court, for example, we spend two days on miscellaneous matters. Large number of cases, over 80 per cent cases are knocked out.
“But still it takes some time. Smaller states are better off. Larger states have their own challenges….The problem is not uniform in every court. It varies. For example, when I came from Tamil Nadu in 2017 to the Supreme Court, 2016 murder appeals were pending there,” he said.
Justice Kaul said suggestions were made for appointing “adhoc judges” after their retirement at the age of 62 years to deal with particular kind of cases in high courts.
“Many eminent lawyers volunteered and said that we were willing to do social service and work for a year and two in a high court doing a particular kind of cases…,” he said.
“So are we not required to experiment? If we are not finding the solution to this arrear problem as it exists, then we need to experiment something. Some experiments may or may not work. The hesitation should not be to not experiment,” he said.
On the government being the biggest litigant, he said, this is “another problem”.
“Why should the government come in appeal for every matter. Some matters like taxation have laid a benchmark for filing the appeal. But some in the bureaucracy have a tendency that they would not like to take the burden of not filing the appeal. Maybe there is apprehension that tomorrow there will be a complaint…So they keep coming to it (court),” he said.
Justice Kaul referred to some statutes where regular appeals can only be filed in the Supreme Court.
“That is another challenge that without going to the high courts, they now come to the Supreme Court. So that area again accumulates work,” he said.
On the use of technology in court proceedings, Justice Kaul said the hesitation to accept technology should be over by now.
He spoke about how the Covid pandemic paved the way for adoption of hybrid system of hearing, held both physically and in virtual mode.
“There are hybrid systems. The hybrid systems are here to stay. You must take help from them. And the lawyers must get the option to appear through hybrid mode. The Covid brought this system. Now in most courts this is continuing,” he said.
“The argument in hybrid systems must be addressed from a proper place… sometimes there is a grievance that you are driving a car and suddenly you start addressing arguments and then the connectivity problem arises. So I think everybody is on the learning curve. We learn from our experiences,” he added.
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