Process of appointment of judges must be speeded up: CJI

Bilaspur: Once again highlighting the issue of vacancies in the judiciary and huge backlog of cases, Chief Justice of India T S Thakur on Sunday said the process of appointment of judges must be accelerated.
The CJI has flagged the issue in his public speeches on many occasions in the recent past.
“There are 12 judges per 10 lakh people in the country and at least three crore cases are pending in the courts. There is a need to speed up the process of appointment to vacant posts of judges,” he said.
As per the Law Commission’s report in 1987, 40,000 judges were needed then, but even today the strength of judiciary was only 18,000, he said. If the situation did not change, the figure of pending cases would cross five crore in the next 15-20 years, the CJI said. (PTI)