Respected Rabi Ray, Justice Purna Chandra Mishra, Justice Papanna, Dr.Manoranjan Panda, Sri Anada Ray, Dr.Sharma , Ms.Sujata Das, ladies and gentlemen,
Now the topic assigned to me is 'reducing the pendency and backlog in the courts'. Frankly speaking, I wanted to come to this seminar not as a speaker but as a listener. Because as a sitting judge of Orissa High Court, I feel very much upset and troubled with the pendency and backlog of cases in courts.
I would like to share my response to the topic. Justice Mishra has pointed out that a large number of cases are pending in all courts and the reason is our type of democracy where we want to have the rule of law and that too in a welfare state. As you know in a welfare state like ours law is expanding in different directions. One of the latest fields where law has expanded into is the environment. No body thought of environmental laws a few decades back. Again no body thought of rights to the disabled people, who have now got their legal rights. In our welfare state the government signs one convention after another on human rights in the world foroums . And accordingly law is expanding and conferring rights on different sections of the society. Once you confer the rights to the people, they must have the remedies. Thus the people have to come to one court or the other in connection with their rights old and new.
Again there is population explosion. Increase in population leads to increase in crime. Again there is executive inaction and also executive nepotism, for which the people come to courts. Then there is widening of the concept of justice which the Supreme Court is now developing, as a result of which the courts can interfere in very many different matters.
The scope of judicial review is also expanding, and consequently more and more number of cases are being filed at the court. However the strength of the judges remains the same. Nine years back when I was elevated the strength of the Orissa High court judges was 16. Today it remains limited to that number too. And out of 16, only 10 are functional today. Three are in pipeline and two can not be appointed from here. Thus the court has to function in much lesser capacity. Let me give simple statistics. During 28.7.2003 to2.8.2003, the number of cases instituted in the High court was 802. Only main cases I am talking about. The number of cases disposed of by 10 judges are 503. There is a gap here of 300 cases. Thus every week about 300 additional cases pile up and accumulate as backlog in the Orissa High court. As a result, the number of pending cases on 28.7.2003 in Orissa High court was 91,421.and in a week it was 91,720. Every week this increase will go on by 300 cases. Thus number of cases instituted is more than the number of cases disposed of. Justice Mishra rightly pointed out if the number of judges are increased and they start discharging their respective duties then this margin of 300 cases shall not only disappear, but there will be a margin on the other side, that is, the number of disposals would be more than the number of cases instituted. It is simple statistics.
I will give you another illustration. There is only one civil judge senior division in Bhubaneswar, whereas Cuttack has four civil judge senior divisions. At Cuttack number of cases are approximately four thousand to five thousand. But the number of cases in only one court at Bhubaneswar is 13,000 cases as against four to five thousand cases in four courts in Cuttack . We called the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, Finance Secretary and Law Secretary and said, 'Look here, if a single judge is to dispose of 13,000 pending cases even there be no further increase in the cases, it will take 60 years for disposal of the existing pending cases in view of the present capacity. Then they realized. Earlier they were not taking any steps to increase the strength of the judges. And they said, 'All right, to start with we can give 2 more'. We sent the proposal for 2 more. Now we shall be shortly arranging 3 more.
So one remedy obviously is to increase the number of judges. In America for 10 lakh people, there are 100 and odd judges. In India for 10 lakh people there are only 10.5 to13 judges. In the judgement in the Judges' case the figure of 10.5 to 13 is mentioned.
The Supreme court has directed in All India Judges' Case that the number should be at least increased to 50 judges for 10 lakh people.That is how things may improve. This is just another way to reduce the pendency of cases, and of course a temporary win. The Central Government thought of first track courts and I am very happy to tell you that the first track courts in Cuttack are doing well in terms of disposal. I do not know of course the exact figures. I have not seen the qualily of judgement either. But they are mostly manned presently by retired judges. As for the statistics, as you know, the first track court started in Orissa on 9.5.2001, and till 30.6.2003 out of the sanctioned number of first track courts, that is 71, we have already appointed 31.They have disposed of 3880 civil cases, 832 sessions cases, 7252 other criminal cases and total is 11,964 cases. Now so far as the response to the first track courts is concerned, in some sections we are getting the opinion that the quality of the judgement is not good. Justice Mishra also said that the quality of judgements of first track courts is not good.
But there is a different section of opinion such as the one at Bhubaneswar which says, their first track courts comparatively perform better. It all depends upon individual judges. How much interest he takes? Our promotee judges also man some of the first track courts. And also we have now decided to appoint even advocates in some of the first track courts following a regular selection. In case they perform well, they will be absorbed directly into courts. The next way to reduce the jam of cases is through the Lok Adalats. Mr. Das has already given the statistics of Lok Adalat. I should say that so far as the civil and the motor accident claim cases are concerned, this is the best solution. The C.P.C has now been amended. There is a provision under section 89 of C.P.C for mediation and settlement of disputes through various methods ,one of them being Lok Adalats. Some new rules are being made as to how the mediation and settlement will work out under section 80 of C.P.C. These have been framed by Justice Jagannath Rao.They have circulated the draft rules to us and we have sent them back to the Supreme Court. May be these rules shall get finalized.
In my opinion, permanent Lok Adalat should be taken seriously by all of us. There are many cases particularly civil cases which can be settled, and if the presiding judges are able to know which ones can be settled, he can send them to the permanent Lok Adalats for settlement. In Orissa there is a scheme in which the Registrar of the court is a permanent Lok Adalat in every district And we can experiment and try to dispose of as many cases as possible for settlement through permanent Lok Adalats.
Some body told me that out of 100 matters of potential litigation only 7 go to courts in America, and 93 percent of the matters are disposed of at the pre-litigation stage through negotiation and mediation. I remember, when in1976 I went to U.S.A, I was staying with a lawyer who was quite rich. One day he said, 'Come, I will take you to a case'. I thought he would take me to a court. I went with him, but he never went to the court. He went to some other lawyer's office with his client. The other client was present and mediators were also present. Negotiations took place and the matter was settled. I was surprised how there were no court proceedings and no arguments by lawyers ! This was strange. But that is the trend. It could be so because people were fed up there with lingering litigations. They think if they go to the court, their matter gets locked up there. If they can settle it outside, the better it is.
I know, in Delhi there are many lawyers, who do not go to the courts. They are earning a lot of money. I know, some of them are earning more than 60,000 rupees per month without going to courts. Of course if the negotiation fails, then the parties go to the court.
Finally, as Justice Mishra pointed out, ultimately everybody wants justice, they want disposal of their cases. And Justice depends upon the commitment of the judge. to do justice by deciding the truth in a dispute. By guesswork justice is not possible. How to develop the legal acumen and commitment of the judges is the essential matter. In my view a judicial academy need to be set up to train the judges about how to adjudicate and write a judgement. While I was in North -East, I was in charge of the judicial academy. I found the judicial academy to be useful. Those judges who were trained in the judicial academy, they performed better back in the courts. Again when new laws came in and new decisions of law came in, they were called back for a refresher course. They were to be equipped and then sent back to their respective field.
In conclusion I would say, as Mr. Das said, disposal of cases or reducing the pendency of backlogs in the courts can not be the concern of judges only. If it remains a concern of judges only, then we may not succeed. It should be the concern of every one, lawyers, law makers and the people at large. Every one of us must think that justice and rule of law are the essential goal of our Constitution. All must get involved. If the executive think that it is not their concern, but that of the judiciary, they are wrong. If the law makers think that they are to make only the laws and justice is not their concern, they are wrong. They usually think, how to develop their respective constituency is their primary duty but not the judicial administration. Out of such a skewed understanding they do not provide the resources for increasing the strength of judges and the necessary infrastructure for the courts and so on and so forth. Then what they are interested about? If they be interested only about how to improve their constituency and do not have a concern for judicial administration, then obviously the judicial reforms that we are talking about can not be realized. We ought to realise that good governance and good justice are absolutely necessary for any peaceful civilized society. You may not provide the people with luxuries and advanced amenities but have to provide them with basic needs like education and health. No State can afford to discard these essential needs. Remember, by discarding these essentials, society will get destabilised. It has happened in North East and as well in many other parts of the country and the world. Similarly justice is an essential need of the society to ensure a peaceful living to the people. If you ignore it, you will have to suffer a lot of consequences. You should realize this and work towards this end.