The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the government to reply on a plea for doubling the number of judges as recommended by the Law Commission of India.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur issued notice to the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Finance on the petition filed by BJP leader and lawyer Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay on the abysmal population-judge ratio in the country.
Huge backlogThe petitioner said India had only about 11 judges per million population, which was among the lowest ratios in the world. The cases pending exceed about 30,000 per million population.
“Obviously, it is unrealistic to expect the law courts to deal with this abnormal caseload or to be accessible to people of India,” the plea said.
Right for faster trial“Expeditious trial is a basic right of every accused, which cannot be trampled upon,” the petitioner said.
