Can the judiciary be absolved of responsibility in the pendency of a huge backlog of cases? CJI NV Ramana says if anybody is to blame for the mess, it’s the entire bunch of governments, from the central to the states. This has raised many questions. Is he giving the judiciary the benefit of doubt or even a clean chit? The reality is the pendency of cases at every level of the judiciary, from lower to higher and highest, is due to a complex of factors, including the well-established custom that the well-heeled and the most influential get the first shot at justice. The depreciation in the numbers of judicial officers could also be one of the reasons for the huge pendency. That said, it does not matter who foists the cases on the courts, the general population, or the government, but the chinks in the judiciary’s armour also account for the delays.
CJI Ramana, however, appears to differ. “Pendency is often blamed on the judiciary… But a keen look at the websites of the courts will give you an idea about the huge workload on judges,” he said on April 30. “The number of cases filed and disposed of each day is unimaginable… It’s a well-acknowledged fact that the governments are the biggest litigants accounting for nearly 50 percent of the cases. These are avoidable burdens on the judicial system,” he added. It is estimated that government-induced cases account for over 65 percent of the backlog. But why do disputes involving various government departments, and those about PSUs, end up in courts? The CJI put it on the poor application of service laws in seniority, pension, and so on. He promised that the judiciary would not be a hurdle in the way of governance if the government worked following the law, which in turn would cut down further government disputes brought to the courts. How Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Law minister Kiran Rijiju took this offer of a fig leaf will be hard to guess, but terming the government as the ‘biggest litigant’ is old hat for Modi, who had on October 31, 2016, while pitching for an All-India Judicial Service, said that there was a need to lessen the burden on the judiciary which is loaded with cases involving the government.
To the common citizen, however, what a passing CJI, or an occasional Prime Minister, says when raising the subject of pendency of court cases, does not amount to much, except routine small talk, meaningless. What PM Modi and CJI Ramana should know is that India’s crores have given up hope on many things, this included. It is common knowledge to all and sundry that the huge backlog of cases has routinely reduced the lifetimes of litigants while extending the life of the pendency of cases. The Supreme Court and the high courts are not innocent bystanders. And neither are the bar associations. Everybody in the judicial hierarchy, and row, are equally in the dock. To the common man looking inward from the outside, everybody contributes to the good new cockfights in the court while unmindful of the albatross of pending cases. There are also the PIL-peddlers who eat their way into the court’s time daily, and nobody cares.
