In case, it is pending...

Hyderabad, July 8: American boxer Rubin Carter, who was known among fans as ‘Hurricane,’ spent over 20 years of his life in jail on a murder charge before he was finally declared innocent and released. His heart-rending story was later made into a movie. There are many like him languishing in Indian jails, with their trials getting delayed interminably. But unlike Hurricane, they rarely get media attention. There are also thousands of petitioners who are pursuing cases for years with no end in sight. Most people in the legal fraternity agree that justice delayed is justice denied. But the fact remains that nearly 2.6 crore cases have piled up in courts across the country.
Thousands of cases are pending in courts in Andhra Pradesh too, delaying delivery of justice to people in all corners of the state. Some of them have incurred huge debts in fighting their cases. Quite often, even petty cases take several years to be resolved and petitioners end up spending more money on travel and the fee of advocates than they would ever get if the case goes in their favour.
The state of those who lose such cases after long trials is even worse. They are sometimes ruined financially. There is a backlog of more than 40,000 civil and criminal cases in the Supreme Court itself and it has increased by 25 per cent in the last one year. Various parliamentary panels have recommended several times that SC benches should be set up in other parts of the country to deal with pending cases but the apex court has turned down this suggestion. Similarly, 3,991,251 cases (3,287,037 civil cases and 704,214 criminal cases) are pending in 21 high courts of the country. More than 2.5 crore cases are pending in subordinate courts.
In Andhra Pradesh, there are 9.51 lakh cases pending in various courts. These cases involve over one crore people. The AP High Court Chief Justice, Mr A.R. Dave, himself admitted recently that the disposal rate of cases has come down drastically in the last few months. The Central government had established fast track courts to help reduce the number of cases. Though they have cleared over 10 lakh of the 19 lakh cases placed before them, there is still a long way to go. The Centre has now extended their tenure by another five years.
To deal with the burgeoning problem, the Centre has also appointed 150 additional judges in the high courts and decided to fill up judicial vacancies at all levels and fund computerisation of lower courts. There are over 2,800 judicial vacancies across the country. There are some encouraging trends. Judges are now attempting to club cases of similar nature so that they could be dealt with together."This way, a court may deal with over 100 cases of a similar nature in one go," said Mr Venkata Rajaram, a senior advocate.
There has also been much focus on revolutionising the infrastructure through computerisation. Karnataka is leading the way in this. "More courts should be established in rural areas so that people won’t have to incur huge expenses to run their cases," said an advocate of the AP High Court.


Backlog cases in various high courts
State Cases
Allahabad 8,08,226

Andhra Pradesh 1,47,537

Bombay 3,67,409

Calcutta 2,79,318

Chhattisgarh 74,701

Delhi 76,674

Gujarat 1,10,639

Gauhati 59,339

Himachal Pradesh 26,781

Jammu & Kashmir 45,374

Jharkhand 49,276

Karnataka 1,04,237

Kerala 1,15,750

Madhya Pradesh 1,87,677

Madras 4,26,347

Orissa 2,27,752

Patna 1,02,165

Punjab, Haryana 2,55,696

Rajasthan 2,12,451

Sikkim 67

Uttaranchal 22,807
(Courtesy:DC)