Courts need 320 years to clear backlog cases

Hyderabad: It will take Indian judiciary 320 years to clear the backlog of cases.That staggering admission came on Saturday from someone who very well knows the way courts work - Justice V V S Rao of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. Thats the time itll take to clear 31.28 million cases pending in various courts,including high courts,he reckoned.If one considers the total pendency of cases in the Indian judicial system,every judge in the country will have an average load of about 2,147 cases, justice Rao said in a speech at the AP Administrative Tribunal. India has 14,576 judges as against the sanctioned strength of 17,641 including 630 high court judges.This works out to a ratio of 10.5 judges per million population,Rao said.The Supreme Court in 2002 had suggested 50 judges per million population,he added.If the norm of 50 judicial officers per million becomes a reality by 2030 when the countrys population would be 1.5 to 1.7 billion,the number of judges would go up to 1.25 lakh dealing with 300 million cases.

A recent study indicated that the number of new cases has direct relationship with increasing literacy rate and awareness,the judge said.Citing the example of Kerala,a high literacy state,Rao said with awareness,28 new cases per 1,000 population per annum have been added,whereas in Bihar,which has a relatively low literacy rate,the figure stands at just three,he said. Justice Rao summed up the Indian situation by quoting a para from the journal of International Law and Politics which said: The typical life span of a civil litigation in India presents a sad picture.Records of new filings are kept by hand and documents filed in court house are frequently misplaced or lost among other papers.Lawyers crowd the court room and wait for their cases to be called.Even when called the judicial attention is frequently deferred by innumerable adjournments. It also said: There is a little likelihood that the judge (who hears a case) will be the same one to issue a decision because the judges are transferred more quickly than the legal dispositions are made.Judges are so under paid and over worked that they often adjourn and delay the preparation of a case.
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(source-toi)