NEW DELHI: A Constitutional bench of the apex court has finally begun hearing the right-to-privacy issue. This brings a ray of hope for the 39 remaining cases which are pending for years and require Constitutional adjudication. There are many pressing matters of national significance that have been pending for long.
These include euthanasia (right to die with dignity), which is pending since 2014, curative petition to decide decriminalisation of homosexuality under section 377 of IPC, which is pending since 2016. Besides these, electoral reforms case is pending since 2016 and the issue of whether the office of Chief Justice of India can come under RTI is pending since 2016.
A major reason for the slow pace of such cases is that often Constitution benches are not set up in time. The apex court has not functioned to its full capacity of 31 judges for quite some time now. This proves a hurdle while constituting the bench.
Moreover, with Constitution benches, the functioning of rest of the court is hampered for days as these hearings are conducted over a few days in a row. The court risks falling behind on its core duty, and so these kind of cases remain unheard. Large volume of fresh appeals and, of course, special leave petitions also affect the formation of these benches.