Justice Gogoi blames HCs for huge vacancies in district courts

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 28

As subordinate courts face a daunting task of clearing a backlog of 2.75 crore cases, Supreme Court Judge Ranjan Gogoi on Saturday criticised high courts for inordinate delay in completing the process for appointment of judges at district level where almost 6,000 judicial posts remain vacant.

Speaking at a Conference on National Initiative to Reduce Pendency and Delay in Judicial System, Justice Gogoi - who is likely to take over as the next Chief Justice of India in October - also pitched for appointment of ad-hoc judges in high courts "very selectively" as a part of solution to huge vacancies in the 24 high court which have a backlog of 43 lakh cases.

He said bulk of the subordinate court vacancies were in Uttar Pradesh (1,344), Bihar(825) and Madhya Pradesh (748) which had huge pendency figures.

Noting that there were talks of having a centralised system of appointing subordinate court judges; and a PIL was also pending on the issue in the Supreme Court, he said, "If we are unable to fill up (vacancies in district courts), I do not blame the government from embarking upon the idea to centralize the recruitment process."

Justice Gogoi squarely blamed high courts for inordinate delay in filling up vacancies in subordinate judiciary.

He said the Supreme Court had in a case on judicial appointment said the entire process could be completed 273 days. But the Delhi High Court took 762 days and the Jammu and Kashmir High Court took 900 days while such appointments were completed in Pondicherry in just 99 days, he said.

"It can happen in 99 days...If you have the right man at the right place, right things will follow," Justice Gogoi emphasised.

Enumerating the qualities of a judge, he said, "What are we looking for? A man or a woman of outstanding merit and abilityutmost integrity and of absolute commitment to work Three qualities I would look for before a person becomes a judge."

He rejected the suggestion made by Prof NR Madhav Menon that a Chief Justice should have a fixed tenure.

"In judiciary we have some norms. Seniority is a norm and when a man's turn comes merely because his tenure is too short may not be a ground to deny him the position. The problem lies with change of priorities with change of chief justices and not with tenure. We must have consistent policy. Tenures do not matter," Justice Gogoi said.

He said he expected CJs of all high courts to take stock of what was happening in their district with the help of technology share the feedback with the Supreme Court and the CJI.

Addressing the judges, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra asked all judges at every level to take up leadership role in dealing with the problem of pendency.

Prof Menon favoured Justice Kurian Joseph's idea of increasing the retirement age of judges to 70 years.