Shortage of Judges impedes disposal of over 90,000 pending cases
Subordinate judiciary facing pendency of 1.50 lakh cases
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Nov 1: Jammu and Kashmir State High Court’s working strength has once again reduced to around 50% due to recent retirement of two Judges and recommendation of Supreme Court’s Collegium for transfer of another. Due to this, there are grim changes of desired reduction in the pendency of cases in both the wings.
Earlier the sanctioned strength of the Judges in J&K High Court was 14 but in the year 2014 the same was increased to 17 Judges including Chief Justice. This step was taken keeping in view sharp rise in the work load during the past some years and with the aim of ensuring expeditious disposal of the cases for providing timely justice to the people.
Following the appointment of two new Judges on August 7 this year the working strength of the High Court increased to 11 and this generated ray of hope about necessary impetus to the disposal of the pending cases in both the wings of the High Court.
However, the working strength has once again reduced to around 50% of the sanctioned strength. On August 28, 2018 Justice Janak Raj Kotwal while as on October 21, 2018 Justice M K Hanjura attained superannuation. Moreover, on October 29, 2018 Supreme Court’s Collegium passed a resolution recommending transfer of Justice Alok Aradhe to Karnataka High Court, the formal order about which is likely to be issued by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice shortly.
Following formal transfer of Justice Alok Aradhe, there will be only eight Judges in the State High Court—Chief Justice Gita Mittal, Justice Ali Mohd Magrey, Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur, Justice Tashi Rabstan, Justice Sanjeev Kumar, Justice Sanjay Kumar Gupta, Justice Sidhu Sharma and Justice Rashid Ali Dar.
“Unless new Judges are appointed or transfers made to the State High Court from other High Courts in the country there are grim chances of bringing down pendency of cases to the desired level with the available strength”, sources in judiciary said.
As per the National Judicial Data Grid, a total of 90545 cases—-81349 civil and 9196 criminal cases are pending in both the wings of the State High Court as on today. Of the total 90545 cases, 44308 cases are pending in Jammu wing and 46237 in Srinagar wing.
A total of 10226 cases are pending for the last 10 years and above while as 27518 cases are pending during the period ranging between 5 years to 10 years. A total of 28125 cases are pending for the period between 2 years to 5 years. Moreover, 24676 cases are those which are pending for less than 2 years.
“The rate of disposal of cases is still not satisfactory and this can be gauged from the fact that last month a total of 1739 cases were filed in the High Court against which only 553 were disposed of”, sources said while stressing the urgent need of increasing the working strength of the High Court Judges considerably.
Not only High Court, even Subordinate Judiciary is facing problem of huge pendency of the cases and prevailing situation clearly indicates that whatever steps have been initiated to bring down pendency have failed to yield the desired results till date.
As per National Judicial Data Grid, a total of 150556 cases are pending in different courts across the State as on today. Of these, 66767 are civil and 83789 are criminal cases. A total of 4431 cases are pending for disposal during the past over 10 years while as 24594 cases are pending for the period between 5 years to 10 years. Similarly, a total of 77356 cases are pending for disposal during the past two years.
“The disposal of cases by the subordinate judiciary in comparison to filing of cases is far better than the High Court and this is evident from the fact that a total of 7167 cases were disposed of last month against filing of 7445 fresh cases”, sources said.
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