India to appoint adhoc judges

The Government of India will recruit 15,000 trial court judges and 700 high court judges on a contractual basis to work in three shifts to clear the huge 3.1 crore backlog court cases. As per the vision statement of the Ministry of Law, retired judges and senior lawyers would be appointed as ad hoc judges for a limited period of one to two years on contract on a consolidated honorarium of Rs 50,000 or more a month. The decision for this ambitious scheme was finalised at the end of a two-day seminar on "National Consultation for Strengthening the Judiciary Towards Reducing Pendency and Delays,” organised by the Law Ministry. At its conclusion, the seminar adopted the Law Ministry's "vision statement", which finalised a multi-pronged scheme to eliminate the staggering backlog of court cases. The schemes ranged from evolving a National Litigation Policy to make the government shed its dubious tag of being the largest litigant and transform it into "a responsible and reluctant litigant from a compulsive one". It also sought establishing a National Arrear Grid for scientific monitoring of pending cases and to reduce time taken in their adjudication at various levels. During the seminar, the judiciary, led by Chief Justice Balakrishnan and the Supreme Court's second senior most judge, Justice SH Kapadia, made a vehement demand for a hike in court fees, specially in corporate and business matters, for better funding of the judiciary. Moily readily acceded to the demand and promised requisite legislative or executive steps for the purpose, reports IANS. The judiciary also demanded establishment of commercial courts in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, and the Law Minister said the Bill for the purpose would be introduced in the forthcoming winter session of parliament. These judges would work in three shifts, with the night shift judges often working till midnight to decide cases so that the pendency of cases is brought down from 15 years to three years. The vision statement envisaged this radical scheme would reduce the backlog of cases to three-year pendency period by December 31, 2011. A status report on the goals achieved will be submitted to the Prime Minister on January 31, 2010. At present, there are 2.7 crore cases pending with the trial courts, the lowest rung of judiciary, where the sanctioned strength of judges for these courts is 16,721. The High Courts have a sanctioned strength of 886 judges, and are grappling to deal with a pendency of 40 lakh cases. The Supreme Court has around 53,000 cases pending, and the sanctioned strength of 31 judges to deal with these.

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