Jayakrishna Sahu
“Indian justice system has been ramshackled. Who goes to the court? You go to court and then regret. Big corporates who can afford to take chance, approach the court.” This is not any frustrated lamentation of any poor, helpless litigant who fails to get justice after years of making numerous rounds of the courts, but the cool observation of Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the person who served as the Chief Justice of India (CJI) for 13 months, Justice of the Supreme Court for 8 years and of High Courts for 11 years before that. A person holding judgship of the higher judiciary for two decades talking so pessimistically and cynically about our justice system, is certainly a matter of grave concern.
Justice Gogoi is not the sole judge to lament on our precarious justice delivery system.
Recently the Orissa High Court while deciding on a 31-year-old case has questioned, “Why so much delay?”. The answer to this question must be difficult, but the question itself seems to be hilarious. The High Court which was sitting over the case for the last 31 years is questioning about its reason!
The National Judicial Data Greed (NJDG) data reveals that 833 such old cases which are more than 30 years old are pending in Odisha High Court. Of them, 821 are Civil Appeals and 12 are Criminal Appeals. Similarly there are 4,421 cases pending in our High Court which are 20-30 years old, 27,887 cases which are 10-20 years old, 45,723 cases which are 5-10 years old, 27,145 cases which are 3-5 years old, 34,271 cases which are 1-3 years old and 32,663 cases which are pending for about a year. Thus, the total number cases pending in Odisha High Court is 1,72,943.
The scenario is same at the national level. According to the data available till December 2020 there were 3,62,30,318 cases pending, including 98,66,767 (civil cases and 2,63,63,551 (criminal cases). Out of these 86,021 cases are pending for 30 years; 20 to 30 years (4,22,142 cases); 10 to 20-years (23,00,599 cases): 5 to 10 years (48,96,136 cases); 3 to 5-years (48,18,624 cases) and 1 to 3 years (92,30,888 cases). The entire nation suffers from the mailaise of delayed justice. The wise old saying, “Justice delayed is justice denied” seems to have no taker among the people at the helm of affairs of our justice system.
As the number of cases increase by leaps and bounds, the quality of the judgements is suffering a meteoric fall, notwithstanding the fact that there is no dearth of meritorious, talented and brilliant judges adorning our judiciary. The average falling standard has been admitted by none other than the judges of the higher judiciary themselves. Very recently a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah has expressed shock at incomprehensible language in which a judgment was drafted by a division bench of the Himachal Pradesh High Court. Justice Chandrachud commented very tersely, “I had to use Tiger Balm after reading the judgment!” Justice Shah added, “I didn’t understand anything. There are long, long sentences. Then there is an odd comma showing up anywhere. I started doubting my intelligence!”
The same bench of the Supreme Court has set aside an order of a High Court remarking that there was no independent application of mind by the High Court and that only the order of the Tribunal had been copied and pasted. Expressing his resentment on latest trend of judges copying and pasting previously passed judgments, Justice Chandrachud remarked, “One of the problems of computer age is copying and pasting of orders. I am fed up of such cut-copy-paste orders of High Courts.”
Very recently the Chief Justice of India SA Bobde has suggested the appointment of ad-hoc judges in High Courts so that the pending cases can be decided faster.
The above suggestions by the top judges are surely valuable, but such solutions are mere patch-works and only temporary solutions to a permanent problem. It’s just like treating cancer with pain-killers and antibiotics. The stake holders have to think deeper and act with more seriousness. While the number of judges must be enhanced, the process of appointment of judges must be made more transparent and honest so that talent and merit prevail over relation and connection.
The writer is a Senior Advocate. Views are personal.