‘Projected cases with judiciary incorrect’
Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia on Saturday gave altogether a new dimension to the much debated huge pendency of cases with the judiciary, saying in real term the arrear of old cases was only a little over one crore not three crore forcing President Pratibha Devi Singh Patil to call for review of the figure.
“Now as the Chief Justice of India has talked about the difference between arrears and pendnecy in cases, I think we will have to review these figures,” the President said while inaugurating a seminar on “Judicial Reforms” at Vigyan Bhavan here.
Justice Kapadia, known for his expertise in statistics, said the entire projection about the burden of huge arrear with judiciary was a misnomer as filing of cases was a continuing process and two crore cases were less then a year old.
Elaborating further, the CJI said in lower court the total pendency by December 31, 2009 was 2.70 crore but 60 per cent of these were only less than a year old and thus could not be accounted as arrear.
Similarly, in high courts the pendency on December 31, 2009 was nearly 45 lakh but 40 per cent of these cases were registered during the year, therefore the arrear actually was of only 22.75 lakh cases.
The CJI said when critics talked about huge pendency, they did not give due credit to the hard work put by judicial officers in lower courts showing a very high rate of disposal.
“If I admit a case today does it become an arrear? No body till today has gone into this statistics,” Justice Kapadia said adding, “A special a team of statistical experts is going into this aspect to segregate the old and new cases.”
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