When the courts demand justice

CJI N V Ramana speaks during the inauguration of B & C Wings of the High Court Annexe Building of the Bombay High Court Bench at Aurangabad on Saturday. File pic

Approximately 20 per cent of the judicial officers in the country don't even have proper courtrooms to sit. There is a shortage of 4,100 court halls and 26 per cent of the court premises have no separate toilets for women and 16 per cent do not even have toilets. Only 54 per cent courts have purified drinking water facilities. Shocking, isn't it?

The damning information comes from Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, who presided over the inauguration of two wings of the annexe building at the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court on Saturday. News agencies reported Justice Ramana saying the "failure to deliver timely justice can cost the country as much as 9 per cent of the annual GDP" and without adequate infrastructure for courts, "we cannot aspire to fill this gap".

Justice delayed is justice denied. The CJI's revelation helps understand some reasons behind the pendency of cases, and you may also have first-hand experience if you happen to visit the kind of court premises the country's highest judicial officer has mentioned in his address to the legal and political fraternity. It isn't just the lower courts that bear the brunt of poor infra, even the Bombay High Court's Mumbai, Nagpur and Aurangabad benches have faced deficiencies on many accounts. CJI Ramana pointed out that the improvement and maintenance of judicial infrastructure is being carried out in an ad-hoc and unplanned manner, asking a fellow guest and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju to consider a proposal to set up the National Judicial Infrastructure Authority in the Winter Session of the Parliament. The minister assured a positive response without any politics involved. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray extended all possible support in Maharashtra.

Consider the concerns that were raised by the Mazgaon Court Bar Association over the dangerous Mazgaon court building in 2016. The matter was taken up with the Bombay High Court which intervened to ensure that the courts were shifted to alternative places. The existing ‘poor quality' building had to be abandoned overnight after merely 16 years of construction. The case has been a textbook example of what the CJI intends to convey. The Mantralaya officials and the Public Works Department have received an earful from the high court whenever the delay in constructing the new building was brought to its notice. It has missed the deadline of 2020 because of the pandemic, but the new 17-floor Mazgaon building is fully constructed and some floors are furnished. During the course of the case, the HC had come down heavily on the state for being oblivious to the shortage of court buildings in Mumbai though the metro's population had crossed the crore mark long ago. If it could happen to the state capital, what would be the plight of other places?

Another eminent guest at the Aurangabad function, Justice D Y Chandrachud advocated the need for introspection from the judiciary on how to address the issue of pending cases in the state and country. He said Maharashtra had over 48 lakh cases pending with around 21,000 cases being more than three decades old. The delay keeps the legal answers pending. It affects the lives of the people being jailed and tried for various offences (65 per cent of the prison population). The COVID-19 pandemic has added to the pendency. As the CJI said, delayed justice costs the country as much as 9 per cent of the annual GDP. The country's top judicial officer has given some causes that badly impact our judicial system and offered a remedy to some extent. He expects the political class to respond wholeheartedly.

‘A grim picture'

Some important findings have been made in India Justice Report-2019 and 2020. The findings say that most budget allocations for justice don't keep up with the increase in overall state expenditure and add that more than 20 per cent of ongoing court cases have been pending for over 5 years in 8 of the 18 large and mid-sized states. India Justice Report's Chief Editor Maja Daruwala writes that the data paints a grim picture of justice being inaccessible to most. Findings highlight that each individual subsystem is starved for budgets, manpower and infrastructure. "The data on police, prisons, legal aid and the judiciary that the India Justice Reports 2019 and 2020 brings together, provides strong evidence that the whole system requires urgent repair. The segmentation of the data into budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload and diversity pinpoints areas of infirmity where quick improvements can be made with relative ease and have the real potential to cause knock-on effects that will spur improvements down the line. At court, the ingress of cases combining as it does with the paucity of judges, poor supporting infrastructure, and low budgets show an accelerating accumulation of cases, going up by 10 per cent and 5 per cent in over two years in the High Courts and subordinate courts, respectively," says Daruwala.

The two reports have consolation for Maharashtra which stands first among 18 large and medium size states in the composite ranking across police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid.

Dharmendra Jore is political editor, mid-day. He tweets @dharmendrajore
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