If a judge clears 50 cases, 100 more are filed: Rijiju on pendency in courts

New Delhi/ PUne: With the number of pending cases nearing the 5-crore mark, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju on Saturday said if a judge disposes of 50 cases, 100 new litigations are filed as people are more aware now and approach courts to settle disputes.

Addressing a seminar on the functioning of the Armed Forces Tribunal in the presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Rijiju said the government is tapping technology to reduce pendency in courts.

Responding to a question during Parliament's monsoon session, the law minister had said that over 4.83 crore cases are pending in courts across the country.

While over 4 crore cases are pending in lower courts, the Supreme Court is burdened with a pendency of over 72,000 cases.

The minister said the proposed law on mediation will also help bring down the number of litigations in courts with a renewed focus on alternate dispute resolution mechanism.

Rijiju also felt that there should be "no comparison" between pendency of cases in India and other countries as "we have a different set of problems."

He said there are some countries that do not even have a population of 5 crore when the number of pending cases in India is nearing the 5-crore mark. He assured the law ministry is willing to offer any help to the Armed Forces Tribunal in quick delivery of justice.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court judge Justice D Y Chandrachud has said that courts in India are "extremely burdened" and "desperately congested," and in view of the alarming rate of high pendency of cases, dispute resolution mechanism like mediation is an important tool.

He was delivering Justice Y V Chandrachud Memorial Lecture here on Friday after inaugurating the Indian Law Society's ILS Centre for Arbitration and Mediation (ILSCA). The Indian Law Society has entered its centenary year. "We are aware that the courts in India are extremely burdened, desperately congested. Both literally and metaphorically. According to the study done by PRS Legislative Research, the pendency across all the courts grew by 2.8 per cent annually between 2010 and 2020," Justice Chandrachud said.

He added that during the past two years, the pandemic and the tribulations that it brought to the human kind, worsened the already alarming rate of pendency of cases.

The data available indicates that there are more than 4.1 crore cases pending in district and taluka courts and approximately 59 lakh cases are pending in different high courts, Justice Chandrachud said.

"As of today, 71,000 cases are pending before the Supreme Court. In view of these numbers, the dispute resolution mechanism like mediation is an important tool in increasing access to justice by providing redress and settlement of disputes in a non-adversarial manner, free from the formalistic procedural practices of the law," he said. He said there is no doubt that mediation has risen in prominence all over the world and certainly in India and Parliament recently introduced the Mediation Bill of 2021. Justice Chandrachud began the lecture by sharing fond memories of his father, former CJI late Justice Y V Chandrachud and his warm association with the ILS.