The government should take steps to expedite the filling of vacancies in the posts of judicial officers in the Supreme Court and various other courts in the country in order to reduce the huge pendency in the cases, said R. Krishnamoorthy, Senior Advocate & former Advocate General of Tamil Nadu.
Delivering the V.C. Rajagopalachariar (VCR) Memorial Lecture, in memory of late VCR, who was a leading criminal lawyer of Vellore at the VIT University campus here on Saturday, Mr. Krishnamoorthy said that the increased level of consciousness of their rights among the people on account of the percolation of education to the lowest levels of the society, manifold increase in the number of writ petitions in the High Courts, increase in the number of white-collar offences, misuse of the Preventive Detention Act by the police in view of the shortage of manpower in the police force, and the flooding of family courts with cases on account of the educational advancement among women have all contributed to the mounting of arrears of cases in the courts in the country.
Under these circumstances, the delay in the filling up of the judicial officers’ vacancies has led to the mounting arrears of cases. Mr. Krishnamoorthy appealed to the lawyers to avoid the frequent resort to boycott of courts since it affected the poor litigants. He wanted increased resort to mediation, conciliation and arbitration to settle cases in order to prevent the flooding of courts with cases.
G. Viswanathan, VIT Chancellor who presided said that there were 3.5 crore pending cases in the High Courts and 2.6 crore pending cases in the district and subordinate courts in the country on account of various reasons, mainly shortage of courts and judges. The ratio of judges in relation to the population of India was 12 judges per one million people as against 41 in Australia, 51 in U.K., 75 in Canada and 107 in the U.S. The ratio should be increased in order to reduce the pendency, he said.
T.M. Vijayaraghavalu, Senior Advocate and a junior of VCR said that VCR belongs to one of the rarest breed of lawyers who fixed the fees based on whether he would be able to help the client in the case.
