Pendency can be tackled even with judges’ dearth: CJ Murari

CHANDIGARH:Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice Krishna Murari believes the scales of justice can be tilted against the rudimentary problem of ever-mounting pendency of cases even with dearth of judges in the higher judiciary.

Justice Krishna Murari (R)

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 19

Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice Krishna Murari believes the scales of justice can be tilted against the rudimentary problem of ever-mounting pendency of cases even with dearth of judges in the higher judiciary.

In his first-ever conversation with a newspaper after taking over as the Chief Justice on May 30, Chief Justice Murari said shortage of judges was a well recognised cause for increasing pendency of cases in courts across the country. But judges could not be brought in overnight as the process of appointments involved several stages and the procedure was time consuming.

Chief Justice Murari was talking to The Tribune on the sidelines of a state-level conference of district and session judges of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. The initiative was aimed at working out solutions faced by the Judges in their day-to-day functioning.

Chief Justice Murari said a straight-jacket formula could not be applied for cracking the code. Insisting on a tailor-made approach, he asserted: “If there was a set approach, all High Courts would have followed it to deal with the problem. But the issues everywhere are different. Local factors such as the prevailing situation and the nature of cases are required to be taken into consideration”.

In favour of bringing about a change in the standard approach, Chief Justice Murari’s own way of dealing with cases may have an answer to the problem. Instead of spending little time on many cases, Chief Justice Murari has been exhausting more time on comparatively lesser number of cases. Giving short dates, Chief Justice Murari has been hearing the cases and deciding the matters in a short span without prolonging the hearing.

Commenting on the system, Chief Justice Murari said the ultimate object of all approaches was to provide timely justice to the litigants.

This assertion comes at a time when the High Court with just 50 judges against the sanctioned strength of 85, is among the top three courts in the country in terms of vacancies, the other being Allahabad and Madras.

As of now, more than 3,48,000 cases are pending adjudication in the High Court alone.