NEW DELHI:As a stop-gap arrangement, the law ministry has drawn up a list of 22 additional judges of various High Courts whose terms are coming to an end in the next two months.
They are from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bombay, Andhra Pradesh and Calcutta. Their terms, however, may be extended. The maximum vacancies will be in Bombay and Calcutta, which have seven and six additional judges, respectively, whose terms will end this month. Three additional judges of the Gauhati High Court have been on extension since May, after their two-year contractual appointment ended. The government had also extended the tenures of seven additional judges of Bombay HC. While the NJAC is primarily responsible for appointments to higher judiciary, the subordinate courts too are facing huge vacancies.
According to official numbers, the High Courts of Bombay, Gauhati, Gujarat, Karnataka, Patna, Punjab and Haryana are at present headed by acting Chief Justices, which means that when the office of the Chief Justice of a High Court falls vacant or when any such Chief Justice is, by absence or otherwise, unable to perform the duties of his office, his or her duties shall be performed by one of the other judges of the court, to be appointed by the President.
The 24 High Courts across the country are functioning with 611 judges as against the approved strength of 1,017 judges as of October 1, 2015—which is nearly 60 per cent of the total approved strength. The scenario is even worse in the lower courts, which have more than 3,300 judicial vacant posts against a sanctioned strength of 17,715 judges. As per the figures assessed by the Department of Justice, the Allahabad High Court faces the maximum empty chairs—85. It is working at less than half its strength. The Chhattisgarh High Court is functioning with nine judges of the approved strength of 22 (a nearly 60 per cent shortfall), while the Karnataka High Court has just 31 judges against the total approved numbers of 62 (50 per cent vacancy). The third largest approved strength of judges is in the Punjab and Haryana High Court (85), where only 52 judges sit to dispense justice.
More empty courtrooms mean an increase in pending cases. Already 2.7 crore cases in district courts remain open across the country. What makes the situation more alarming is that 60 per cent of the cases are only over two years old, since more than 20 lakh cases currently pending in the district courts are at least a decade old. Of these, around 70 per cent are criminal cases, which also highlight the plight of the victims and their families seeking redress. At least 30 per cent of all pending cases are between two to five years old. More than 10 per cent of cases have been pending for over a decade.
The judiciary is shouldering the burden as best as it can—6.82 lakh cases were disposed of last month, including 4.8 lakh criminal cases and 1.93 lakh civil ones. According to available data, only 17,283 cases of the ones disposed of last month were pending for over a decade.
The vacancy nightmare is further exacerbated by the fact that the decision of the five-judge Constitution bench will not be the last word on the NJAC issue. Legal sources say the new judgment can be challenged before a larger bench of the Supreme Court, and may even ultimately land with an 11-judge SC bench in view of the fact that its previous judgments on the Collegium system were delivered by nine-judge benches. The increasingly yawning gap in judicial vacancies looks grim for justice in the country.