Shortage of Judges in HC creates hurdles in bringing down pendency

Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, May 25: As there is absolutely no focus on timely filling up of vacancies of the Judges in the J&K High Court and increasing the sanctioned strength, there are bleak chances of any discernible reduction in the pendency of cases, which otherwise has assumed alarming proportion much to the disappointment of justice seekers.
J&K High Court has sanctioned strength of 14 Judges including 9 Permanent Judges and 5 Additional Judges. But, at present there are only 8 Judges including the Acting Chief Justice and six posts have been lying vacant. Till few days back there were 10 Judges in the High Court and only 4 posts were lying vacant.
However, following posting of Justice Ramalingam Sudhakar and Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir as Chief Justices of Manipur and Meghalaya High Courts, the number of vacant posts of J&K High Court Judges has increased to 6, which means the highest court of the State is working with almost 50% of the sanctioned strength.
The situation will worsen further as two Judges of the High Court will attain superannuation within next few months as a result of which working strength will get reduced to mere six and in such a situation it would be impossible for the High Court to pay any attention towards reducing the pendency, which otherwise has assumed alarming proportion, sources told EXCELSIOR.
As per the statistics of National Judicial Data Grid, a total of 84634 cases are pending in the State High Court. Of these, 42980 cases are pending in Jammu Wing of the High Court while as 41654 cases are yet to be disposed of in Srinagar Wing.
Out of total 84634 cases, 9569 are pending for 10 years and above while as 27869 cases are pending for the period between five years to 10 years. Similarly, 28982 cases are pending for disposal for the period between two years to five years and 18214 are pending for less than two years.
In the month of August last year a process was initiated by the J&K High Court to fill vacancies of the Judges by making a recommendation to the Supreme Court Collegium, which on April 6, 2018, cleared the names of Wasim Sadiq Nargal, Nazir Ahmed Beig, Sindhu Sharma (all advocates) and former District and Sessions Judge Srinagar Rashid Ali Dar.
However, the Union Ministry of Law and Justice has yet not taken any final decision although nearly two months have lapsed since the Supreme Court Collegium made recommendations, sources regretted while expressing inability to specify time-frame for appointment of new judges.
It is pertinent to mention here that following Union Law Ministry’s decision the file will go to the Prime Minister and thereafter to the President of India for issuance of warrant of appointment.
“Moreover, the Union Law and Justice Ministry didn’t pay any attention towards filling up of vacant posts of Judges in J&K High Court even at the time of clearing names of Justice Ramalingam Sudhakar and Mohammad Yaqoob Mir for appointment as Chief Justices of Manipur and Meghalaya High Courts”, sources regretted.
How Union Law Minister and Supreme Court can expect eight Judges of J&K High Court to clear pendency of over 84000 cases?, sources asked.
They disclosed that even suggestion of several former Chief Justices of J&K High Court regarding increasing sanctioned strength of Judges has not been taken seriously at any forum—be it Union Law Ministry or Supreme Court.
Justifying the necessity of increasing the sanctioned strength of J&K High Court Judges, sources disclosed that several High Courts in the country have far less pendency as compared to J&K High Court but the sanctioned strength of Judges there is several times more than J&K High Court.
Quoting an example, they said that pendency of cases in Delhi High Court is 71529 but the sanctioned strength is 60—45 Permanent Judges and 15 Additional Judges and against this the working strength is around 40. “There are numerous such examples which suggest that sanctioned strength of J&K High Court Judges is grossly inadequate despite unprecedented rise in work-load”, sources added.
“The prevailing situation demands filling up of posts of Judges in J&K High Court as well as increasing sanctioned strength in a time bound manner if the pendency is to be reduced and timely justice is to be dispended to the litigants”, they said.

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