With the help of DAKSH, a Bangalore-based organisation which has been involved in some amazing work on the judicial system, the Delhi High Court ran a "Zero Pendency Project" to gather data towards solving the seemingly insurmountable problem of backlog and judicial delays. Having spent almost two years running this Pilot Project, the Report of the Zero Pendency Project has recently been made available.
Contrary to some news articles, the Report does not say that all pending cases in Delhi can be cleared by appointed 43 more judges. The Pilot Project was only examining a select group of courts — Sessions Courts on the criminal side, District Courts, Motor Accident Courts, and Labour Courts on the civil side. The estimates for the "ideal" number of judges needed to clear pending cases is only in reference to these courts (Page 62 of the Report). To read them as anything else is, well, wrong.
In fact, the recommendations part of the Report is, according to me, the least significant. What the Report does recommend is, frankly, not very new. Like many earlier reports, we are told that delays are caused by bogus adjournments, missing witnesses, and missing parties. But what is different in this Report is the granular data collection by which these problems are identified, and that is what makes the study a great contribution to the field of work examining the Indian legal process.
In short, make sure to read the Report!
No comments:
Post a Comment