Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 23: High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has issued additional guidelines/directions in respect of Action Plan for the District Judiciary for strict adherence.
As per the circular issued by Registrar General, District Case Management Committees (DCMC) shall prepare a list of targeted cases for each court within the district along with details, copy of which shall be sent to the Member Secretary SCMS Committee, High Court of J&K & Ladakh. Moreover, the DCM Committee shall, in this regard, convene and hold meetings with the members of the Bar to ensure that the Bar members are fully engaged in and supportive of the efforts to reduce arrears.
The DCM Committee shall discuss and frame timelines and other necessary steps in consultation with Judicial Officers at the district level and the copy of the minutes of the DCM Committee meetings shall be sent to the Member Secretary SCMS Committee, High Court of J&K and Ladakh.
It has further been directed that the Presiding Officer of each court should carry out a comprehensive physical verification of the case files in their courts within one month and thereafter they should reconcile the findings with the data shown on the National Judicial Data Grid/CIS and the compliance report with anomalies, if any, be immediately submitted to the Member Secretary SCMS Committee, High Court of J&K and Ladakh.
“The Presiding Officer of each court shall identify undated cases and make concerted efforts to assign hearing dates to each case as promptly as possible and shall send details of such cases to Member-Secretary SCMS Committee of the High Court”, the guidelines said.
Further, the Presiding Officer of each court has been asked to ensure that if the record of an old/targeted case included in the action plan is/has been lost, efforts be made to reconstruct the record at the earliest by soliciting copies from the parties and retrieving relevant court orders etc.
The Principal District Judges have been asked to ensure and manage equitable distribution of old/target cases in the concerned courts within the district and discuss this aspect in the DCM Committee meetings.
“They shall make a comprehensive assessment of the current case load taking into account the complexity and nature of each case as also the expertise and experience of the Judicial Officers and the existing case load assigned to the Judicial Officers with a view to ensure that the cases are allocated in a manner that balances the work-load across judges and prevents one judge from being excessively burdened”, read the guidelines.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
