Table of Contents
Why in news?
Supreme Court expressed displeasure over tardy approach of different high courts and state governments in filling up vacant posts for judges in lowers courts.
What does the court noticed?
The court, in its previous hearing on October, wanted to know if the time being taken for appointments was beyond the seven-month schedule formulated by the top court in the Malik Mazhar Sultan case.
Appointment Process?
- District judges are appointed by the Governor in consultation with the High Court.
- Other subordinate judicial officers are appointed as per rules framed by the Governor in consultation with the High Court and the State Public Service Commission.
- This shows that the High Courts have a significant role to play in lower level judicial appointments.
- A smooth and time-bound process of making appointments would, therefore, require close coordination between the High Courts and the State Public Service Commissions.
Reasons
- Finding the funds to pay and accommodate the newly appointed judges and magistrates.
- Public Service Commissions should recruit the staff to assist these judges, while State governments build courts or identify space for them.
- This time limit is 153 days for a two-tier recruitment process and 273 days for a three-tier process.
- Most States took longer to appoint junior civil judges as well as district judges by direct recruitment.
Consequence of judicial backlog
- Dilution of the right to access timely justice
- Delay will result in additional piling up of the cases which will further enlarge the cost of maintenance.
- The cost of litigation can push them into debt-trap and poverty.
- Approach the informal courts instead of the courts established by law. This has allowed mushrooming of khap panchayats.
- Poor people often restrain themselves
- This even wipes-off the fear of law and punishment from criminal’s mind.
- Poor management systems can misplace the records which can prove to be a gross miscarriage of justice.
Importance of Sub-ordinate Courts to Common Citizens:
Most critical judicial functions
Huge workload
Judicial Backlog
Way Forward
- Need to improve the infrastructure of judicial system and increase the human resources at the disposal of judiciary.
- Information technology
- Institution of evening and morning courts to deal with petty matter like traffic violations/challans
- Setting up of special courts like property courts, commercial courts and e-courts for speedy disposal of cases.
- strengthening judicial academies and training of cour functionaries.
- The Centre and the judiciary should collaborate on finding practical solutions like appointing more judges based on periodic needs assessments, increasing their retirement age, and deploying judicial resources efficiently.
Indian Judicial Services
The proposal for an All India exam along the lines of Civil Services has been mooted many a time, the first instance being 1960. Setting standards of judicial recruitment examinationsto improve the quality of district judges.
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