CJI Ramana urges chief justices of HCs to enhance judge-to-population ratio

By PTI

 NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Saturday highlighted the problem of judicial vacancies and urged the chief justices of excessive courts to enhance the judge-to-population ratio in order that it’s corresponding to superior democracies.

Ramana mentioned as on right now, out of 1,104 sanctioned posts of excessive courtroom judges, there are 388 vacancies.

Speaking at a joint convention of chief ministers and chief justices of excessive courts at Vigyan Bhawan right here, he mentioned an vital think about selling entry to justice is filling up of judicial vacancies and rising the sanctioned energy of judges.

“From day one, it has been my endeavour to fill judicial vacancies. We have made 180 recommendations for appointments in various high courts last year. Out of these, 126 appointments have been made. I thank the Government of India for clearing the names. However, 50 proposals are still awaiting approval by the Government of India. The high courts have sent around 100 names to the Government of India. They are yet to reach us. The data reveals the earnest efforts being made by the judiciary to fill the vacancies,” the CJI mentioned.

He urged the chief ministers to increase “wholehearted” cooperation to the chief justices of excessive courts of their endeavour to strengthen the district judiciary.

“When we last met in 2016, the sanctioned strength of judicial officers in the country was 20,811. Now, it is 24,112, which is an increase of 16% in six years. On the other hand, in the corresponding period, pendency (of cases) in district courts has gone up from 2 crore 65 lakh to 4 crore 11 lakh, which is an increase of 54.64%. This data shows how inadequate the increase in the sanctioned strength is,” Ramana mentioned.

The CJI mentioned until the inspiration is powerful, the construction can’t be sustained.

“Please be generous in creating more posts and filling the same, so that our judge-to-population ratio is comparable to advanced democracies. As per sanctioned strength, we have just around 20 judges per 10 lakh population, which is alarmingly low,” he mentioned.

Referring to Attorney General K K Venugopal’s assertion at a Supreme Court Bar Association occasion Friday, the CJI highlighted the problem of vacancies and pendency of instances.

Venugopal had mentioned that 40 million instances are pending earlier than trial courts, whereas 4.2 million civil instances and 1.6 million felony instances are pending in excessive courts.

“How do you expect that we would be able to even make a dent in the pendency of cases,” he had mentioned.