CJI not worried about the pending cases

Observing that 1.62 crore cases were pending in Indian courts, Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said he was not worried about the pending cases but would like more cases to come to courts.

‘We are not worried about the pending cases. We are worried about the absence of cases. We want more cases to come to courts,’ Justice Balakrishnan said after inaugurating the Chandigarh Judicial Academy which would train judicial officers from Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.

He said the number of civil cases coming to the lower courts was quite low, indicating that the people were shying away from coming to the courts.

He said in order to tackle such a huge number of pending cases, there was a need for a large number of new courts in the country.

But since that was not possible very soon, the judicial officers needed to be trained how to dispose of cases expeditiously.

He said judicial academies should inculcate social values among judicial officers and make them aware of the basic human rights, rights of the HIV affected and the rights of the physically challenged.

After inaugurating the academy, Justice Balakrishnan also interacted with the Judges of Bombay High Court through Video Conferencing.

He said there were plans to connecting all the judicial academies in the country with each other through video conferencing Supreme Court judges Justice S B Sinha, Justice D K Jain, Justice V S Sirpurkar, Justice A K Ganguly, Justice Tarun Chatterjee, Justice H S Bedi, Justice Mukundakam Sharma and Justice Deepak Verma were also present on the occasion.

Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice T S Thakur and other sitting and retired judges of the High Court were also present during the inaugural function.

The 5-storey building of the academy has been constructed by the Engineering Department of the Chandigarh Administration at a cost of Rs 63 crore in an area of 8.5 acres in a record time of 22 months.