Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani has expressed concern over the backlog of cases in Indian courts. On Saturday, the party veteran in his blog said the country will need 75,000 judges for the 150 million cases over the next 30 years to deal with the pending cases.
Mr. Advani who has penchant for films, quoted a famous dialogue from actor Sunny Deol's film 'Damini'. “Have you seen the Hindi film, Damini? It has Sunny Deol playing a rugged, honest, but largely unsuccessful lawyer who takes on the system through one vital case. That film had many memorable dialogues...The film’s other angst-filled rant on ‘tarik pe tarik’ or a justice system that issues date after date to appear for court hearings for years for a single case, but delivers no justice, has never stopped echoing,” he said.
Citing specifics, Mr. Advani said there are more than 30 million cases pending in India, 80 per cent of them in the lower courts. “The high courts have four million pending cases and the Supreme Court had more than 66,000 cases. The National Court Management System says at the moment there are 19,000 judges ― of these 18,000 judges are in trial courts ― and sometimes a civil case can last for 15 years. In the last 30 years, the number of judges had grown six times but the number of cases grew 12 times!”
Pointing out to the magnitude of the problem, the senior BJP leader said no one really knows where the required number of judges are going to come from and, “no one is really clear about who has a plan to solve this”.
