Chief Justice of India TS Thakur read out a list of 75 names sent to the Centre for appointment as HC judges since February but lamented that there had been no progress.
“The Centre is attempting to bring the judiciary to a grinding halt by not appointing high court judges,” Thakur told attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, who promised to get back on the status of the list by September 13.
The court asked the government to send back the names in case of a problem but to not hold up the appointments. “If this logjam goes on, we’ll be forced to judicially interfere with the government and ask for every file sent to you by the collegium.”
The strongly worded comments came roughly four months after the CJI broke down and criticised successive governments for not increasing the number of judges to a number sufficient to deal with millions of pending cases.
India’s judicial system is crippled by a shortage of judges and cases often take several decades to reach a verdict, especially in the lower courts.
India’s 24 high courts have nearly four million cases pending before them while another 30 million cases clog trial courts. But clearing this backlog is considered virtually impossible with the current strength of judges –in the high courts, 434 posts out a sanctioned strength of 1,056 remain vacant.
Meanwhile, on Friday the Rajya Sabha was informed that 478 vacancies are yet to be filled up in 24 high courts of the country and nearly 39 lakh cases are pending there.
The government also said the sanctioned strength of judges in the high courts has increased from 906 in June 2014 to 1079 in June this year.
Though the sanctioned strength has increased, according to the latest Law Ministry data, as on August 1, the working strength of the 24 high courts is 601 judges, which means 478 vacancies are yet to be filled up.
The Supreme Court, with a sanctioned strength of 31 judges, including the Chief Justice, has three vacancies.
The figures relating to total number of pending cases in the high courts and the increased sanctioned strength of judges was given by Minister of State for Law P P Chaudhary in a written response to a question.
Giving out the reasons behind pendency of cases, he said increased impact of state and central legislations, accumulation of first appeals, vacancies of judges, frequent adjournments were the main causes for pending cases.
In the past, a government attempt to set up a national judicial appointments commission to appoint judges was quashed by the top court, which said the independence of the judiciary would be compromised by a body that was proposed to have ministers on it.