Government considering different working shifts of courts to ensure faster disposal of pending cases

07 July, 2012

Considering that over three crore cases are pending in different courts in India including the Supreme Court, the high courts and the subordinate courts, the union ministry of law and justice is working over a mechanism for having different working shifts for courts to ensure speedy disposal of pending cases.

UNION LAW Minister Salman Khurshid said this while addressing a national conference on ‘Law and Economics’ at an event organized by industry body Assocham.

“We are working very rapidly towards ensuring the disposal of pendency in courts and to see how can we address this through nights, morning and evening working shifts of courts and even by having courts sit over weekends and by having more of alternative dispute resolution,” said Salman Khurshid as per the release by the Assocham.

“The government is very much committed and we have a justice delivery mission that works on different methodologies like the Supreme Court has e-court committee and also the case management and court management. Though computerization is making enormous differences but with it we need a process in place and there is a need to look at re-engineering,” added Khurshid.

The law minister also emphasized on the need to look at the type of cases that are actually clogging up the courts. He gave an example of section 138 in the negotiable instruments Act, which is clogging up the trial courts and others.

Talking about certain social activists' concerns regarding the government's seriousness towards passing the two key anti-corruption bills, The Whistle blower Protection Bill and Grievance Redressal Protection Bill, Salman Khurshid said that all the bills are in the parliament at various stages of processing and the government is absolutely committed to these bills as they are far reaching bills.

Sharing his concerns over the issue of delay in appointment of members in the legislative tribunals the minister said that it is an issue of serious concern and the problem being faced by the government is that these are the specialist tribunals and the people mandated to select personnel for these tribunals have to ensure that their conscience allows them to make that selection.

About the inter-ministerial panel’s report that the government will miss the deadline on spectrum allocation set by the apex court the law minister said that the telecoms ministry has a very hard task to perform and the government is hopeful to meet the deadline as Supreme Court has denied any further extension.

Delhi High Court's acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri, while addressing the conference said that the judges should also analyze the economic impact of their decisions.

“It is imperative for the law makers and the policy makers to regulate the conduct through law. Besides, it is equally important for the judges to understand the economic impact of their decisions while deciding about the cases,” said AK Sikri according to the Asscoham release.