Supreme Court Chief Justice DY Chandrachud channelled his inner Sunny Deol Friday, borrowing the Bollywood star's iconic "tareekh peh tareekh (date after date)" dialogue from 'Damini', as he expressed frustration over cases being postponed repeatedly. The Chief Justice said he had collated data on this issue and said that in September and October alone 3,688 adjournments had been sought.
"Today alone demand has been made to postpone hearing in 178 cases," he said, underlining the extent of the problem facing an overburdened and understaffed judicial system.
"We do not want these courts to become tareekh peh tareekh (date after date) courts," an irate Chief Justice said, "This defeats the purpose of speedy hearing of cases."
For those who don't remember (or know!), in 'Damini', Mr Deol plays a lawyer defending a rape survivor and his "tareekh peh tareekh" exclamation comes as he is besieged by pleas for one extension after another by Amrish Puri, who plays the lawyer defending the rape accused.
Back in the real world, repeated postponing of cases, whether by the Supreme Court, any High Court, or lower courts, delays justice and adds to the workload of a stressed judiciary.
As of Wednesday, against a sanctioned strength of 1,114 judges for the Supreme Court and all High Courts, there are a 332 vacancies. Put bluntly, nearly 30 per cent of judges' seats are vacant.
There are three vacancies in the Supreme Court. Among the High Court, the maximum number of vacancies is in the Allahabad High Court (68), followed by Punjab & Haryana (32) and Bombay (26).
Only Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Tripura are operating at full capacity.
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In February then Law Minister Kiren Rijiju told Parliament that as on December 31, 2022, the total number of pending cases in district and subordinate courts was estimated to be over 4.32 crore. He also said there were over 69,000 pending in the Supreme Court and 59 lakh across all High Courts.
READ |Supreme Court Has 69,000 Pending Cases, 59 Lakh In 25 High Courts: Centre
Days later Mr Rijiju said the volume of pending cases was "not the fault of the judge but of the system", and that the government is taking more steps to address the issue.
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