Judicial reforms

In a move to end the “once a litigant always a litigant” curse, the Centre is examining the first draft of a blueprint that promises to reduce the average pendency of a case from 15 years at present to a mere three years over the next two years. The ambitious legal reforms will look to setting a certain timeframe for a trial court to deal with a case and could also look at streamlining the appeals process. The reforms are expected to significantly change the lives of nearly 10 crore litigants involved one way or another in 2.6 crore cases some of which can drag on for decades. With trials often being a labyrinthine process with numerous adjournments, law minister M Veerappa Moily had asked attorney general G E Vahanvati and solicitor general Subramaniam to use their experience in judiciary to suggest a practical ready-to-use plan of action to help the common litigant who is often deterred from approaching the courts for fear of long pendency. The first draft of the blueprint for shrinking the litigation time to just threeyears, prepared by the two top law officers, was recently handed over to the law minister. This draft is expected to form the agenda of national consultation on judicial reforms, scheduled for end-August. An overall improvement of the justice delivery mechanism would follow if the suggested reform is implemented, official sources said. They explained that once the drastic reduction in the life of a trial court docket happens, it would unburden 16,000-odd judges of a huge pendency allowing them to give more meaning to the term “justice”.
THE BITTER TRUTH :
Average litigation time for a case in India is 15 years .
Blueprint proposes reducing it to 3 years by 2011 .
Total pendency of cases in trial courts is 2.64 crore .
Total number of judges is 16,685 of which 3,129 posts are vacant .
Average number of cases per judge is 1,583 .
Total number of persons involved in litigation is nearly 10 crore, excluding family members