The Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (KSLSA) has identified 2.74 lakh cases among the 20.22 lakh cases pending in courts as on March 1, 2021 as fit to be settled in the mega Lok Adalat to be held on March 27.
Addressing a press conference, Justice Aravind Kumar, a judge of the High Court of Karnataka and the Executive Chairperson of the KSLSA, said that the State government has already released ₹1,260 crore to be paid for settlement of several cases related to land acquisition during the forthcoming mega Lok Adalat.
Savings to exchequer
The mega Lok Adalats will not only give relief to litigants by away of amicable settlement and reduce burden on courts, but also save crores of rupees for the State exchequer in the form of payment of salaries to judges and court staff, and other incidental expenses, he said.
Justice Kumar said that settling a record 2.61 pending cases on a single day in the previous mega Lok Adalat on December 19, 2020 had saved around ₹102 crore for the exchequer.
It would have taken 80 days or 87,274 man days to disposes of these 2.61 lakh pending cases for the around 1,100 judges in the State considering that a judge in the State disposes an average of three cases per day by taking the average of number of cases disposed in the last three months of 2019, he said.
While ₹39.47 crore has been saved in the form of salaries payable to judges and ₹64.15 crore in the from of salaries payable to court staff by considering the average salary per judge as ₹4,523 per day and the average salary of six court staff (per court) as ₹7,351 per day, Justice Kumar said. Going by this calculation, he said, the mega Lok Adalat held in December 2020 involving 940 judges was only ₹1.1 crore while the savings to the exchequer was around ₹102 crore.
