The Panacea for Pendency: Will Rs. 9,700 crore cure an ailing judicial system?

It is surely cause for concern that there is a 57 year-old case pending in the Jharkhand High Court. According to research organization Daksh (co-founded by Harish Narasappa), the case was filed on January 1, 1958. What is more alarming is that this is just one of more than 3.5 crore pending cases in courts across India..Disposal RateStatesBelow 500 cases per judge per annumBihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, SikkimBetween 500 and 1000 cases per judge per annumAndhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, OdishaBetween 1000 and 1500 cases per judge per annumGujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West BengalAbove 1500 cases per judge per annumArunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura.If that number isn’t big enough to ruffle a few feathers, an estimate by the Supreme Court’s National Court Management System certainly is. The NCMS predicts that pendency figures across Indian courts will increase five-fold in the next three decades. So what can be done to stem the flow of spiraling pendency figures?.In the recent past, legal experts and politicians alike have made a number of solutions, the implementation of which require a considerable amount of financial investment. This is a fact even Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledges. At a conference held a couple of months ago, the PM spoke about reallocating funds from tribunals to courts so as to make them more effective..A similar sentiment is shared by former Chief Justice of India VN Khare. In an earlier interview with Bar & Bench, he said,.“To bring down pendency, we need more infrastructure, we need to increase the strength of judges. If the government spends 10,000 crore on the judiciary, you will see how the system changes…”.What has the government done to address the issue? The Department of Justice, in its proposal to the 14th Finance Commission identified certain aspects of the judicial system that require strengthening. These include establishing additional courts, improving existing infrastructure, digitization of case records, training of judicial officers, etc..HeadAllocation (in Rs. crore)Establishing Additional Courts (including fast track courts and family courts)5,544Renovation of existing court complexes1,400Manpower for e-courts project and digitization of court records1,252Law School-based Legal Aid Clinics50Establishing Lok Adalats100Promoting ADR Methods803Training of judicial officers525Establishment of State Judicial Academy in NE states75TOTAL9,749.And the 14th Finance Commission welcomed the DoJ’s proposal with open arms, allocating a whopping Rs. 9,749 crore for the next five years to breathe life into a judicial system plagued by pending cases. In addition, the Union Budget has made an allocation of around 806 crore to the judiciary for this financial year..Though this figure falls well short of Justice Khare’s demands, it is by no means a small sum. Another interesting fact is that history has shown that most of these funds remain unutilized. As per records of the 13th Finance Commission, Rs. 5,000 crore was allocated to the Department of Justice during the five-year period between 2010 and 2015. Ultimately, Rs. 1480 crore was released, out of which a meagre 32% was utilized..HeadAllocationTotal ReleaseTotal Utilization% of utilizationMorning/Evening Shift Courts2,500713.7934.514.83Lok Adalat & Legal Aid30093.4842.9745.97Training of Judicial Officers25081.3667.3182.73Heritage Court Buildings450128.7059.9446.57State Judicial Academy3009976.4277.20ADR750231.69153.4166.21Court Managers30085.3811.8513.88TOTAL5,0001479.95471.4431.86.As is evident, the idea to establish courts with additional morning and evening shifts in order to dispose of pending cases was an abject failure. The reasons given for the failure include lack of co-operation from the Bar Associations, lack of retired judges and lack of co-ordination among various state and central departments..What one can garner from this is that perhaps merely pumping in money will not help alleviate the situation. The question to be asked here is, what needs to be done to utilize the allocated funds in a more efficient manner?