Addressing The Problem of Pendency in Courts

Recently, The Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud stated that increasing the number of judges will not demolish the perennial problem of pendency and also Sushil Kumar Modi, Chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice has called for out of the box thinking to solve the problem of the backlogs remaining in the courts.

Every year, we witness the spectacle of numerous seasoned and finesse judges leaving the High Courts due to their retirement age which is 62.
Like the richest sediment on river banks getting swept out to sea, many have several good years of work left in them that go to waste.
These Judges who are given the extension of service can hear admission of Special Leave Petitions.
These are appeals which are filed in huge numbers every week against all kinds of orders of lower courts and tribunals across the length and the breadth of the country.
They are considered to be the biggest obstacle in the functioning of the judiciary which take away half the time of the courts.

The courts had its innovative method of function due to the challenges posed by the COVID19 shutdown by harnessing online facilities, and, pretty soon, judges and lawyers were quite wellversed in this new medium and welcomed its ease and flexibility.
Unfortunately, this new mechanism was not continued after the pandemic which should have been continued as an alternative mechanism to resolve the cases in a time bound manner.
However, enabling these ad hoc judges to work online from home with minimum support staff is an excellent harness of human and technology resources; it will enable a vast number of cases to be disposed of.

The significance of the mediation as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism can be seen in the fact that most mediation centers have a success rate of over 50%.
Mediation is considered to be way better than litigation in wide range of cases including personal and matrimonial to civil and property disputes.
These Alternative dispute resolutions have proven successful in clearing the backlog of cases in various levels of the judiciary.

Source The Hindu

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