Union Minister for Law and Justice Ravishankar Prasad said here on Sunday that the Centre would develop a databank on the performance of young lawyers so that the best talent was appointed judges.
Addressing the 22 annual convocation of the National Law School of India University, Mr. Prasad said the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, recently passed by Parliament, would mark the beginning of a participatory process with increased transparency in the selection of judges while maintaining judicial independence and predominance.
Acknowledging that the justice delivery system was weighed down with pending and backlogged cases, he said the major contributing factors for this were an inadequate number of judges and infrastructure deficiencies. As on December 2013, 4,382 posts of judicial officers were vacant. Alternative dispute resolution had great potential to reduce the burden on courts and dispose of cases without litigation.
Mr. Prasad said increasing the sanctioned strength of High Courts by 25 per cent had been approved in principle. The High Courts had begun the process of sending in proposals for filling vacancies. Mr. Prasad, who holds the Communications and IT portfolio too, said the Ministry was focussing on digitisation of courts and aimed at computerisation of 14,000 subordinate courts.
