Indian courts have earned notoriety for long delays in the dispensation of justice, whether this be the Supreme Court, the high courts or the lower courts. Cases are dragging for decades without the final verdict emerging. Now, as high as five crore cases are pending in various courts. Of these, some 32 lakh cases are pending for over a decade. There have been no serious efforts on the part of the central government to effect reforms in the judiciary to overcome such painful scenarios. The government, it would appear, is not even serious about filling the existing vacancies of judges. It turns out that several recommendations for judge appointments that were cleared by the Supreme Court have been pending with the government for a long time. In this context, a reminder sent by Chief Justice of the apex court, Justice BR Gavai, the other day to the government stressed that collegiums recommendations must be processed “in their entirety without cherry-picking”. This exposed the rift between the government and the judiciary in such appointments.
As was stated in Parliament, two judge-vacancies exist in the Supreme Court, 371 in the high courts and over 5,200 in the district courts. From 2020 till now, 35 judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court and 554 judges to the high courts. The government blames the courts for not forwarding or processing vacancies immediately after each retirement. Courts say the government is delaying their recommendations. Fact is that both sides are not doing their jobs even as millions of cases are clogging the judicial system for want of timely disposal. Justice delayed is Justice denied. It is no secret that extraneous factors delay the selection and appointment of judges. The government has its likes and dislikes; and so do the judges. At both levels, a fair manner of selection based on merit is quite unlikely. State governments are also involved in the selection of judges for each high court., wherein names are forwarded by the high court chief justices to Delhi. Yet, a trust-deficit is evident between the government and the judiciary.
Indian courts have conducted themselves with considerable restraint and wisdom when it comes to handling matters related to the government. Unlike in Pakistan, courts here make an attempt to avoid embarrassing top governmental functionaries in general, an exception being the disqualification of election of Indira Gandhi by the Allahabad high court, leading to her imposition of Emergency. It helped her carry on as prime minister for a while more in the 1970s. Another confrontation was in 2015, when the Supreme Court, in a controversial action, stalled a law that the UPA-II had brought in to appoint a judicial appointments commission to streamline the process of recruitment of judges. The Modi government did not show the courage to take this forward to its logical conclusion. Any democratically elected government worth its salt is duty-bound to reduce the current interminable delay in justice-dispensation. This needless delay hurts one and all.