Verrappa Moily’s National Mission For Justice Delivery

Girding up to clear 2.3 crore pending cases, the Centre has agreed to increase its contribution by Rs 2,000 crore in the next five years to provide trial courts with adequate infrastructure. Identifying lack of court infrastructure as a major bottleneck in clearing the mountain of backlog, the Union Cabinet approved law minister Veerappa Moily's proposal to operationalise the National Mission for Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms. The clearance of the proposal means the Centre will now bear 75% of the cost of infrastructure expansion of trial courts in the next five years. "A preliminary assessment of required infrastructure for subordinate courts from the states had revealed that around Rs 7,000 crore would be needed over five years. The central government outflow would be around Rs 5,500 crore," law ministry sources said. In case of north-eastern states, the Centre will continue to bear 90% of the expansion cost. The national mission 2011-16 will focus on two major goals -- increasing access by reducing delay and arrears and enhancing accountability through structural changes and by setting performance standards and capacities. The mission enlists five strategic initiatives -- policy and legislative changes, re-engineering procedures and alternative methods of dispute resolution, focus on human resource development, leveraging information technology for better justice delivery and improving infrastructure. The mission intends to create All India Judicial Service, Litigation Policy, Judicial Impact Assessment of all new laws, amendment to the Negotiable Instruments Act and Arbitration and Reconciliation Act. Lakhs of cheque bounce cases are pending in trial courts and time and again the Supreme Court has frowned upon subordinate judiciary being used as recovery agents by corporate houses.