NEW DELHI: With just a few days left for incumbent Chief Justice of India S A Bobde to demit office, the biggest challenge for his successor, Justice N V Ramana, is to tackle the huge pendency and vacancies in the Supreme Court.
CJI Bobde will demit office on April 23, bringing down the number of apex court judges to just 28 against the sanctioned strength of 34. No judges have been appointed to the top court since September 2019.
As on 1 March 2021, there were 66,727 matters pending in the Supreme Court whereas on March 1, 2020, the figure was 60,469.
This shows that the number of cases pending in the court has increased over a year’s time.
Though the Supreme Court worked more during the Covid-19 restrictions than what it did in other years, the pendency has still touched an all time high.
The main reason for the high pendency is the restricted physical hearings and shifting of the whole judicial work online.
In the beginning only important cases were taken up for hearing but gradually miscellaneous cases too were taken up.
Urgent e-filing protocols were drafted and implemented. Despite the initial glitches, to the judiciary’s credit the system improved and evolved, quite literally with each passing day.
As per the Economic Survey 2017-18, pendency hampers dispute resolution, contract enforcement, discourage investments, stall projects, hamper tax collection and escalate legal costs, which leads to Increasing cost of doing business.
Due to the backlog, most of India’s prison population are detainees awaiting trial and are in turn overcrowding the prisons.
The main challenge is to immediately focus on how to make the virtual courts user-friendly.
Once it is achieved, more cases in addition to urgent matters can be listed for adjudication which results in timely delivery justice despite the pandemic.