The time has come to think and talk about many things. One is the need for changes in India’s judicial system. Over the course of the last year, Chief Justice NV Ramana has repeatedly spoken about the need for the creation of a National Judicial Infrastructure Authority to fix the abysmal quality of judicial infrastructure at the district level. He even sent a proposal for the creation of such an authority to the Union Law Minister in October 2021, a copy of which was recently provided to us by the Chief Justice of India’s office under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The backdrop to this proposal requires a brief discussion. In mid-2019, the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a non-profit organization, published a pan India survey report on the state of judicial infrastructure at district courts authored by our former colleagues Sumathi Chandrashekharan, Reshma Sekhar, and Diksha Sanyal.
The Indian Constitution follows a fundamental framework which sets the very foundation of the Constitution. The Constitution of India consists of three pillars: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The Indian judiciary is regarded as one of the most important foundations of these three because it is an independent entity. The Indian justice system can prosecute even the country’s top officials. The Indian Constitution came into effect on 26 January 1950, and it is known as the world’s largest constitution. The constitution is India’s basis of legislation and India’s supreme legislation as well. This is dependent on maintaining and upholding law and order. The justice system in India is a court system. The court has the authority to decide and enforce the rules, settle conflicts, too. The judiciary system consists of judges and other magistrates who constitute the judicial system’s bench.
The survey covered 665 district court complexes in India and assessed each court complex on the parameters laid down by the National Courts Management Systems Committee in one of its earlier reports on the baseline requirements to make a district court complex litigant friendly. These included parameters such as ease of reaching the court, navigation, availability of waiting area, barrier-free access, hygiene, availability of case displays, security, amenities, and toilets.
The Supreme Court is for the whole country, High Courts for the states, District Courts, and other courts for lower levels. India has an integrated judiciary system. It means the country’s judicial administration is governed by the Supreme Court. Its orders are binding on all other national courts.
There are approximately 12,000 courts – 1 Supreme Court, 21 High Courts, 3,150 District Level Courts, 4,816 Munsif / Magistrate Courts, and 1,964 Magistrate II Courts. Only six of the High Courts have original jurisdiction, i.e. civil cases may be brought directly in those courts, such that the monetary interest of the claim reaches a certain amount. These are the Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Madras High Courts. Many high courts are Courts of Appeal. In places where the High Court has no initial authority, even cases involving substantial amounts of money will go through lower courts, which often do not possess the requisite expertise to adjudicate complicated matters.
Judicial independence means it is not under the control of either the legislature or the executive. The judges should not behave on the government’s behalf or in compliance with the party’s wishes for office. For this reason, all western countries have courts independent of the legislative and the executive. India managed to achieve this.
India’s justice structure consists of -
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The Supreme Court,
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High Court,
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District Court, or Special Tribunal.
1 The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is the apex court. It is the highest judicial body in India. This means that any order passed by the court cannot be challenged. It consists of one Chief Justice and 30 judges. Unresolved or still in litigation cases are levelled to the Supreme Court for reclaiming justice. If a law is declared by the Supreme Court, it is binding on all other courts of all States and territory within the Union. The Chief Justice and the judges are chosen by the Collegium system. Eligible to become a Chief Justice is an individual who had been a judge in one or more high courts for at least 5 years or a lawyer in the high court for at least 10 years or a distinguished judge on whom the President of India believes in. Article 124-147 of the Indian Constitution lays out the duties and roles of the Indian Supreme Court. The key role of the Supreme Court is to review the judgment handed down by the High Courts. However, as specified in Article 32 of the Constitution, a petition can be filed directly at the Supreme Court.
2 High court
Under India’s constitution, each state should look to a single High Court. Mumbai High Court was India’s oldest court and the Supreme Court at that time. There are currently 24 High Courts. The High Court has 94 judges, of which 71 are permanent, and 23 are additional. The High Courts have limited jurisdictions to their associated states or parts within the Union. Economic problems and legal paperwork are dealt with by the High Courts. Under Article 141 of the Indian Constitution, the High Courts are obliged to obey the Supreme Court’s directions and its instructions. A petitioner may, as provided for in Article 226 of the Constitution, appeal to a High Court. Calcutta High Court is the oldest high court in India. Eligibility to become a High Court judge is: He should be an Indian citizen, and in any case, the lawyer should have at least 10 years of experience.
3 District Court of India
Under India’s constitution, the district court is subordinate to high courts or subordinate tribunals. The State Governments establish the district courts. District courts are established according to district and state population distribution. Depending on the workload of the specific case, the district courts are provided with one district judge and even several assistant judges. It takes control of the district’s legal and criminal matters. A rule proclaimed by the district tribunal extends to all subordinate tribunals. Eligibility for district court judge – He should be an Indian citizen and an advocate who has at least 7 years of practice.
All Indians can enter the country’s courts. This means that every person has a right through the courts to justice. In reality, it has always been difficult for the vast majority of the poor in India to access the courts. Judicial proceedings cost a great deal of money and paperwork which takes up a lot of time. The work carried out by the courts can be divided into:
(i) Dispute resolution;
(ii) Judicial review;
(iii) Law preservation and human rights protection.
As the Indian judiciary turns 70, there’s a lot to be proud of, the judiciary has been the spiritual conscience of the country, speaking truth to political authority, defending citizens’ freedoms, mediating center-state tensions, providing justice to both rich and poor alike, and protecting democracy itself on many momentous occasions. Despite its successes, a disparity between ideal and fact has become apparent over the years. Justice delivery is sluggish, the appointment of judges is mired in confusion, judicial processes operate poorly, patronage rather than competence still seems to be the fundamental rule, women are seriously underrepresented, and constitutional cases frequently languish for years in the Supreme Court.
Need to reform the Indian judiciary system
A powerful, independent judiciary is of great importance for India’s development. As the basic core of life is a fast and productive operation. Yet by its definition Indian judiciary has been very weak and inefficient. Furthermore, our laws and their implementation have contributed to immense suffering for the litigants and driven people to search for possible remedies.
The very core of society is an autonomous and unbiased judiciary and a swift and effective operation. But, by its very nature, our judiciary has become weighty, and appallingly slow. Our laws and their implementation and adjudication resulted in immense suffering for litigants and pushed citizens to try extra-legal alternatives. Relative to other governmental agencies, and even compared to other courts in many countries, the justice system is financed poorly.
According to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business survey, India ranks 168 out of 190 countries on ‘contract compliance.’ Using Mumbai numbers, it notes that settling a disagreement from the date of filing takes 1445 days.
India has one of the highest numbers of under-trial prisoners in the country. A little more than two-thirds of the nearly 4.2 lakh inmates in India are awaiting trial. The criminals languish in jail not because they are found guilty and sentenced to prison but because they are convicted of crimes that are too serious to deserve parole, or merely because they are too vulnerable and disempowered to secure parole.
The propagation of justice in our society is heavily dependent on the judiciary. Hence its credibility is central to the sustainability of India’s civil order. As long as Indian citizens believe in court mechanisms and integrity, the judiciary remains the interpreter of the laws and the determinant of social justice, it should be. Sadly, some things restrict the application of our laws to all Indian people. Many who challenge courts not only pay the burden of the case; they also waste a great deal of time waiting.
Another problem that calls for change is to overreach of the judiciary. There is a need to appoint more judges in court. In 2015, the Supreme Court overturned the National Commission for Judicial Appointments (NJAC) Act, declaring it unconstitutional. A renewed version of this idea and aim could help to appoint more judges effectively. An autonomous executive authority should be formed specifically to ensure the compliance of court-issued decisions, and to enhance confidence in their efficacy. The government has to take immediate steps to avoid this court system being disrupted and out of control for everyone other than the moneyed.
Issues with the Indian judiciary
The problem, despite the overwhelming power, is that the Indian judiciary faces certain integral issues. The Indian judicial system, for example, is erratic, underemployed, and above all, extremely slow. Our country’s citizens continue to have confidence in our judges and the administration system of justice, and if they stopped believing in the system, there would be anarchy. And unfortunately, the faith has been shaken by the events of the last couple of years. Unless we are rescued from the quicksand by corrective measures, we will all be in the sinkhole.
The issues faced by the judiciary system are :
1 Delay in justice
The delay in the trial has been proven to be one of the greatest drawbacks of a court system. If we examine in-depth about why the Indian judiciary is lagging behind, it can be concluded that the issue lies at the grass-root level. The Indian judiciary has struggled to provide justice. People’s levels of difficulty in getting their cases heard contribute significantly to the system’s overall chaos. Delay in justice means the time is taken to dispose of a case and the time that the court would spend in determining the matter is delayed.
The time taken for a case in the High Court or the Supreme Court is beyond imagination, starting from the moment it is taken to file an FIR to the moment the judgment is made. There’s too much red-tapism people face when dealing with legal problems. Justice delay creates disillusionment among the litigants and also undermines the capacity of the judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied holds for India. One of the main reasons for the delay of justice is that the institution of court cases exceeds its disposition.
2 Case pending
There is no controversy that the biggest issue the judiciary faces is the number of pending cases. There are over three crores pending cases in India. The huge backlog of cases is proving to be the primary judicial problem. About four lakhs of them are cases in the High Court, 65,000 in the Supreme Court. This figure is increasingly growing and in fact, reflects the inadequacy of the judicial system. Increasing the number of judges, and establishing more courts, has always been debated but the execution is always late or insufficient. Where does one describe a ‘case dependent’? Is a lawsuit that was initiated yesterday (a highway challan) as much a pending prosecution as one that was initiated twenty years ago (gang rape and murder) not decriminalized yet? Each law defines the words used in the statute, and the court will rule on the interpretation of those words. However, we have not yet decided on the definition of a ‘pending case’ and therefore all cases in court are pending.
The top five states are Uttar Pradesh (61,58 lakh), Maharashtra (33,22 lakh), West Bengal (17,59 lakh), Bihar (16,58 lakh) and Gujarat (16,45 lakh), according to the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG). The victims are average or poor citizens, while the wealthy can hire costly lawyers and in their favour, change the direction of the law dispensation. That also creates a huge blockade for business in India for international investors and corporations. And even because of this backlog, most of the inmates in India’s jails are in jail pending trial. The arrears in tribunals and commissions are staggering too and most cases have a direct impact on the everyday life of the common citizen. And, even though our concepts are precise, though we count up the lawsuits pending in the courts, tribunals and commissions, we will come up with an unmanageable caseload that undermines the foundation of our justice system.
This amusing load of cases is the source of setbacks, adjournments and dissatisfaction among the litigants who are enduring the slings and arrows of ridiculous misfortune. Remedial steps are completely important and, without them, the agitation could turn into rage, followed by the day of doom. One of the stalwart indicators of the inefficient justice system is that incidents like the 1984 Sikh Riots still await a final decision. Besides, in these long 32 years, many of those who were finding justice have expired.
3 Corruption
Corruption has penetrated deep into the system. The various recent scandals, such as the CWG scam, 2 G scam, Adarsh Society scam, including rapes and other crimes in society, etc., have exposed both the actions of politicians and public dignitaries, including the common man, as well as the weaknesses present in the working of Indian judiciary. The government-judiciary relationship can make it much easier for government officials to manipulate judges. Top government officials have little or no respect for the concept of the separation of powers and use their enormous powers to manipulate the judiciary. Governments, particularly State Governments, use various techniques to manipulate the judiciary including the extreme case of offering gratification to judges.
All the procedures get slowed down with so much corruption involved in the legal profession. In addition to the lack of workforce and corruption, the Indian judiciary is endangered by low resource allocation. The late amount of money allocated to India’s judiciary is the lowest compared to all the other countries around the globe. There is no transparency mechanism for this. Owing to the fear of ridicule, the media still don’t give a clear picture. There is no provision for registering an FIR against a judge taking bribes without the permission of India’s Chief Justice.
More than 45 percent of Indians claim that the justice system is corrupt. In the lower courts, corruption is not just rife, others have alleged that this abuse hits the highest levels that are deeply detrimental to the judiciary. Unfortunately, as an assault on the judiciary, the Indian judiciary has shown a fondness to respond to any letter or statement from the executive or legislature or even the political establishment.
In 2011, Sumatran Sen, a former judge at the Calcutta High Court turned into the primary judge in India to be reprimanded by the Rajya Sabha for misappropriation of assets. Judges, fearful of reprisals from government officials, seem eager to do whatever is necessary to remain in the good graces of the government, sacrificing the right to the fair trial of the citizens in the process.
4 Transparency
The lack of transparency is another issue faced by the Indian judiciary. Substantial issues like the quality of justice and accountability are not properly known in the functioning of the judiciary. Judiciary does not fall within the scope of the Right to the Information Act. There have been numerous civil arguments around the country regarding Collegium’s framework and the new framework to be presented by the administration for the arrangement of judges, the NJAC. None appear to be sufficiently transparent to make the process of selecting judges clear and understandable to the general public.
Right to know is a part of freedom of speech and expression as provided by the Constitution, but this fundamental right is being violated by the present system. The right of the individual to learn is now a common phenomenon and is also endorsed by judicial rulings. We don’t have a straightforward and foolproof framework for naming judges. This often contributes to delays in the positions filled up.
The new government headed by Prime Minister Modi says more accountability in nominating judges would be the launch of the National Judicial Appointment Committee (NJAC). Nevertheless, India’s Supreme Court denied the argument and said there is a need for an even higher standard of law for the selection of judges as NJAC is not “complete.” According to the Supreme Court, the bar council was invited to amend the NJAC citing that the committee will consist of India’s chief justice and four supreme court senior judges. Later, in 2015 the NJAC was declared unconstitutional.
5 Judicial capacity
The most contentious part of the administration of justice is and has been so for many decades, the appointment of judges. Independent India started with independent judges who took separate decisions. Many of those choices were not to the establishment’s taste, so attempts to call them to heel were made. But the judges stood like a pillar which contributed to the establishment theorizing that a judiciary was compromised. To some extent, the government was successful in making inroads into judicial independence.
Allocation of new judges will help the swift dismissal of cases. As of September 1, 2015, the High Courts had a deficit of 413 judges. Although the approved strength is 1,079, around 666 judges work across the country. But there is a massive shortage of subordinate courts, while they have provided an authorized strength of nearly 20,000 judicial officers which is short of 4,937 judicial officers. Judge vacancies are cited as the main hindrance to the level of cases being disposed of. Indian Judiciary Annual Report 2015-2016 and in the Subordinate Courts of India: A Report on Access to Justice 2016’– which also highlighted that it would require nearly 15,000 more judges to overcome millions of cases in the next three years.
6 Undertrial accused
Many of the prisoners in Indian prisons are under trial and are confined to the prisons until their case finds a definitive conclusion. Another drawback that results from the above-mentioned drawbacks is the provisional allegations against the convicted. In India, more than two-thirds of India’s nearly 4.2 lakh prisoners are being held, which is one of the world’s highest numbers of undertrial prisoners. They’re in jail not because they’ve been proven guilty, but because they’re being tried on non-bailable offenses or because they’re too low to pay a bond.
Indian detention institutions are brimming with provisional individuals; they are confined to jails before a definitive decision is drawn in their situation. The cost and suffering and agony of defending oneself in court is worse than completing the punishment itself. Undercover is not guilty until convicted. The wealthy and influential men, on the other hand, can call the police to their side, and the police can threaten or intimidate unpopular and vulnerable people during the court’s long ordeals.
7 Infrastructure
The infrastructure requires to be implemented to provide a more effective judiciary. Firstly, poor infrastructure encourages corruption. Records of court cases and decisions are held in less than adequate circumstances, leaving them vulnerable harm or malicious loss. That will be a tremendous amount of paperwork involved. Additionally, the court’s archive is not stored in one location, and the trials and hearings are not registered. Therefore, there is a need to use improved technologies to document claims, other devices such as CCTV can also be used for recovery and similar procedures.
Second, the courtrooms are not designed to accommodate audio, slide and other multimedia displays to help finders understand the case and arrive at a reasonable judgment. Incapable of mounting technical evidence due to insufficient resources, the applicant bearing the burden of proof is significantly impaired and will bear his or her plight without any reasonable means for redress or substantive program assistance.
8 Lack of interaction with society
It is really important for every country’s judiciary to be an intrinsic part of society, and that its contacts with society be made routine and significant. In every situation, it is always the responsibility to ensure that they are properly participatory to classify the knowledge with the legislation. The law officer and developers ought to be similar to the general public to look into their conclusion on a particular rule or decision.
However, several countries involve their citizens in judicial decision-making, no such setup exists in India. The citizens must take an active part in judicial activities to build an effective judiciary system.
Reform of Indian judiciary
As Justice Chelameswar claimed in the NJAC judgment in his dissent, the courts ought to amend to maintain them. The government needs to improve the common man’s quality of living. This attitude is honorable. In addition to upholding the rule of law, particularly by taking stern steps against gang activity and religious intimidation, what the government will do better is to make the judicial system operate quicker and more reliably in this area. A Bloomberg Businessweek estimate states, “If the nation’s judges nonstop battled their backlog — with no breaks to eat or sleep — and closed 100 cases per hour, it will take more than 35 years to catch up.” Here are a few suggestions for the reformation of the judiciary system in India.
Judiciary is essential for the State and a priority must be given to it. There has to be an improvement in the funding for the justice system and an improvement in efficiency. This along with reforms in civil and criminal practices, as well as reporting and regulatory processes, will go a long way towards streamlining trials and reducing court delays.
Improve District Courts
There must be a bottom-up approach to the reformation of the judiciary in India. The biggest concern is with the district courts where lakhs of people come into touch with the system of administration of justice. Many administrative improvements and ad hoc modifications at the Supreme Court and high courts will not affect the structure until the concerns of those courts are resolved, and the ordinary litigant will have to endure the slings and arrows of cruel fortune. A high-level team must tour each district court to ascertain if the services and amenities are missing. It would shock many to learn that, for many years, several court halls and registration rooms have not been whitewashed and there is a breakdown of windows, tables, racks, and almirahs. There are innumerable pending cases in the lower courts. These must be tackled to have a better structure. More judges must be appointed to the district courts than the high courts. This will help to deal with the pending cases.
The Gram Nyayalayas Bill has been enacted to set up more trial courts at the intermediate Panchayat level. The welcome feature is that the procedures have been kept simple and flexible so that cases can be heard and disposed of within six months. It is also envisaged that these courts will be mobile, to achieve the goal of bringing justice to people’s doorsteps. Training and orientation of the judiciary, especially in frontier areas of knowledge, like bio-genetics, IPR, and cyber laws, need attention.
Increase judicial capacity
The first thing the government can do is to increase the number of magistrates. This method is not a simple one. It requires action at every level. The number of judges needs to be increased including the Supreme Court, the High Court, and the lower courts. To at least double but preferably triple the number of judges. India needs a variety of amendments, to fill up all the existing vacancies. It is the most critical step toward solving India’s serious lack of judicial ability. Indian judiciary needs a streamlined recruitment process also.
Special attention must be paid to the appointment of District Court judges and their transfer. We need to provide more vacancies for judges, especially at the lower levels of the judiciary. District judges with legal degrees and postgraduate degrees come to the service. People and women with outstanding intelligence are quite frequent. We accumulate experience as judges over the years and then their appointment as high court judges are postponed because of the district judiciary’s corruption. Relatively unimportant jurisdictions are granted to the district court. They are also viewed with less deference by Bar owners. Very few district judges have made it to the Supreme Court except for maybe a few well-known and extraordinary instances. Gates to the above platform are often opened by considerations other than competence. They are neglected based on religion or status. Very qualified judges are superseded by these factors. The lower judiciary requires a structured procurement mechanism that is handled by full-time supervisors rather than judges. That is, our court needs a committed Human Resources Director. Vacancy rates in the lower courts are about 25 percent, and in high courts, about 40 percent. Indian courts are therefore only operating at just 75 percent of their already extremely poor capacity. And so the new openings must be filled out immediately. This will help to reform the judicial capacity of the system.
Court management
The Indian judiciary needs a dedicated branch of the registrar, administration, and management. India today dreams to become a completely digitized society. We were, to a large extent, productive. But oddly enough, the Indian judiciary is left behind. This would help save a great deal of time to and from paperwork. A computerized program should be in place which minimizes human discretion.
Courts need a separate list of court/administrative personnel to better streamline the legal process. Today this sort of automated procedure is used for many government programs such as passport issuance. But courts, which are much more loaded and pendent than other public services, continue to operate without a sensible administrative infrastructure. For example, also in higher courts, judges spend precious time arranging trials and times and appearances before the court.
India needs to create a judicial service to provide the resources required to ensure the smooth running of courts. In the UK, the service has a qualified workforce that works to support the court system, ranging from recruiting procedures, internal infrastructure management, and caseload delivery systems. India requires a specific framework, preferably at the state level, to consider and implement the judicial system’s resource needs, staffed by administrators and helmed by retired magistrates.
Case management
Case management is a systematic method for monitoring resources and incidents in a dispute as it moves through the court system, from inception to settlement. Our politicians tend to have the idea that it is not possible to dedicate attention to case management because of the overwhelming number of outstanding litigation. However, this is not valid. During a lecture given at the Delhi Judicial Academy around 15 years ago, a U.S. federal judge who practiced case management told the judges that he had started with about 3,000 cases in his jurisdiction and reduced this number to about 300 in three years.
India is famed for issuing adjournments and encouraging parties to manipulate judicial delays. This can be addressed by modifying legal rules to restrict the number of circumstances in that adjournments is granted. Justice allows the court to provide plenty of time for thorough trials including adjournments in emergency cases. In the Indian scenario, we achieve neither justice nor productivity.
Modifying the evidence and the procedures of the court and reducing the number of delays, continuations, and adjournments permitted by the court can help in management.
To impose fines or sanctions on the party that delays and demands continuance and adjournment. Penalties and fines on parties failing to file the required papers or evidence on time. To ensure adherence, the timeline for the completion of the case requires a clear set of penalties, especially for the party deviating from the timeline. The data or records of each judge for the disposal of cases should be made public and ideally incorporated in decisions to raise judges to a higher bench.
Infrastructure
Since the colonial period, the physical architecture of Indian courts has not improved much. Both in overall scale and the number of courtrooms, courts need to expand, but they still need to enlarge to meet the additional personnel needed in the back office and registrar, as well as physically handle the number of lawyers and parties or the regular court footfall. Specific items, such as the number of bathrooms, parking spaces, waiting rooms, etc., did not increase to keep up with the population or a load of incidents. Even the courtroom at lower levels lacks basic infrastructure. This has to be looked upon for the betterment of the system. To deal with the rise in the number of people and cases represented, Indian courts must physically increase in size.
Faster trail
There are innumerable pending cases in India. The cardinal issue with the current judiciary is that the trials for such cases are so slow that it might take ages for them to be resolved. The judges must have a faster trial process in India. A successful start will be to declare the creation of a new court in each district, naming thousands of new magistrates. The Law Commission has consistently recommended hearing cases, avoiding postponements, and arriving at speedy verdicts. That is only possible if the case load per judge is sufficient. It will be a big move forward to create an Indian Judiciary Service and create a wide pool of qualified, committed judges that will increase the pool of talent available for promotion to the higher court. A further goal is improving the system of selecting judges and keeping their work to account. The executive and the legislature will play a part in the process.
Judicial delays must be cut down. Citizens should have easy access to the courts. This includes successive Chief Justice, judges, governments (central and state), prosecutors, registry workers, scholars, and academics — working together to ensure that litigants have better access to justice.
The answer to dealing with the enormous backlog of cases is not just increasing the number of judges or filling vacancies, though both would help. Innovative approaches such as developing new courts of appeal, exploring IT technologies that can simplify workflows as reported by India’s Chief Justice, and constructing improved facilities that enable access to courtrooms are some ways forward to chip away from the current backlog. A mission to that end must be set up under the leadership of the Chief Justice. This mission will ensure that the Indian judiciary is known not only for the eloquence of its substantive judgments but also for its ability to deliver justice quickly, independently, and in a way that keeps the public’s faith intact. Much as Chief Justice Kania had foreseen when, in 1950, the court first opened its doors to the public.
Merit appointment
By the term merit appointment, we mean that the appointment of judges must be based on their qualification and their ability. The Indian judiciary, in contrast, tends to appoint judges based on caste, race, and religion. It is a shame that a system that appoints judges on these merits, and as is seen to do so, is eluding us, with two approaches being tried — executive-led and judicial collegium-led. That is because criteria are not explicitly set out. The perfect procedure should be a board of appointments, composed of the Chief Justice, two senior judges and the executive members. That will ensure checks and balances, as well as speed up the entire cycle by providing a skin in the game to the government, requiring it to be kept responsible for the decisions taken. It will also uphold judicial primacy and be in line with the need for judicial freedom.
The system must also consider women in the appointment. It is so heart-breaking to see that despite so many women in law school, very few join the litigation field. In any profession, the few who have to face the prejudices are mostly women. A common corollary is a minimal appearance at the table. When one moves up the current ladder the difference decreases. Just 10.89 percent of high court judges as of 23 March 2018 were women. Today the number in the Supreme Court is 9.09 per cent. When we go up the ladder of the judiciary the number of women fall sharply. The pyramid has to go on for the betterment of the judiciary structure in the country.
Better investigation
India lacks an investigation policy. A lot of innocents who are falsely accused get punished due to the lack of investigation. They suffer from mental abuse and harassment, There are several instances where this factor has been proven. A trial court on January 6, 2018, dismissed a lawsuit filed against a senior scientist at the electronics department, Narayan Waman Nerurkar, dating back to 1987 as entirely untenable. Dr Nerurkar had been accused of releasing a German radar test paper that his maker intended to sell to the Indian army. A photocopy of the report was sent by a courier service to a foreign address who, for some unknown reason, wanted to open the packet it was intended to deliver overseas and discovered a classified paper about military affairs, and told a particular CBI officer who was then present at the Bombay office of the courier company for some unexplained reason.
Nambi Narayanan’s story is legendary. A scientist leading India’s efforts to build a cryogenic rocket engine at the Indian Space Research Organization, Thiruvananthapuram, he was falsely accused, along with some others, of leaking technical details of the project in 1994. He spent fifty days in prison, he said he was being tortured. In 1998, he was cleared by a CBI investigation. But it ruined his reputation, his life was in total disarray. The National Human Rights Commission has directed Kerala’s government to pay him Rs 1 crore compensation.
Hierarchy reduction
The term ‘higher judiciary’ is difficult to embrace. The term “higher” connotes a hierarchy in itself. When one speaks of the higher judiciary, does one talk of the inter-court or intra-court setup? A federal judge is better than a Munsiff. A section bench is higher than a regular bench inside a Supreme Court and a separate bench higher than the section as well as the regular bench from the precedent point of view. The Supreme Court is better in that way than a district court, given that appeals flow to the former.
Otherwise, there is little difference between the essence of the duties done at any stage by any magistrate. Artificial distinctions are sometimes made intra-court, particularly with the Chief Justice’s office. There is no other difference in the Constitution. By naming the “lower” judiciary the district courts and the magistrates, severe disservice is done to their role and significance in the administration of justice. We will discontinue using terms steeped in the hierarchy. Overall, the courts should be more aware of the transformative force of words than any other organization.
Conclusion
For a long time in India, there have been disputes regarding the system of judiciary. Judiciary is considered as one of the most important pillars in the framework. The 70 years of the judiciary system have reformed itself in many ways. Irrespective of these reforms, there is still a lot of development that must be made. Probably the important thing to humanity is an efficient and effective judiciary system. Because India’s judicial system doesn’t seem very efficient, reforms are required. Policy litigations make up about 46 percent of all court cases. Thus, under the guidance of the Law Ministry, the PMO is driving the judicial overhaul and the national legal strategy.
Themes related to judicial appointments, judicial activism, judicial accountability, and digitalization attracted stakeholder attention. Several government-appointed committees and commissions have made recommendations on how to set the system right. Many of them, however, remain unimplemented. A judicial system is made up of three elements — laws, institutions and the staff involved. Laws and organizations are not self-executing, so it is the workers that implement the program. To a large degree, the inadequacies of legislation and structures can be resolved when qualified, and committed practitioners are the people who run the structures.
There are other judicial changes desperately needed in our country. As a stable and effective conflict settlement and justice delivery mechanism, which is not only essential for social security but also economic prosperity would draw more foreign investors. Things have changed, and people are involved round the clock nowadays. But the Indian judiciary still operates early. They have summer holidays, winter holidays and even more leaves. When we bear the burden of three crore backlog events, it is not appropriate. A fast-track judiciary must be placed in motion so that crucial proceedings can be submitted immediately to the Supreme Court without losing time.
This is also crucial for the courts to realize that certain kinds of crimes must be heard as early as possible, as in cases of rape, the claimant does not wait for justice for 10-20 years; in cases of crime where the odds of punishing innocents are strong due to police pressure to act quickly, the courts do prosecute those cases as soon as possible so that the State itself will not give birth to the victims.
It is worth recalling from the preface to the report of the Justice Malimath Committee: “Everything has been said already, but as no one listens, we must always begin again.” (Andre Gide).