FIND A MANAGER, MY LORD

Vacancies, poor judicial infrastructure keep India’s justice delivery system in cuffs

- CHITRAKSHI JAIN AND SHREYA TRIPATHY

THE judiciary is one of the most complicated cogs in the governance machinery. Spread over each and every taluka of the country, it comprises of over 17,891 judges at the district/taluka level, about 676 judges at the high court level and 33 judges in the Supreme Court. We estimate a staff of approximately 32,000 bureaucrats supporting the high courts, with the graph rising at the district/taluka level. It is the judiciary that has to recruit these bureaucrats, manage its own physical and digital infrastructure, and plan for future requirements. The central and state governments have an army of IAS officers et al to help in planning and execution, but the managerial functions of the judiciary are discharged almost exclusively by the high court judges, who have to juggle it with their adjudicatory role. Little surprise then that judicial administration is mismanaged at such an epic scale.

Every now and then, you see the Supreme Court get bellicose on the high courts. In an ongoing litigation initiated suo motu by the former Chief Justice of India, all high court registrars and state chief secretaries were hauled up in open court for their failure to fill judicial vacancies and build more district-level judicial infrastructure. The court directed, for good measure, that timelines prescribed by the amicus curiae be adhered to. But these timelines are not made in consultation with those who have to execute the works: the state/district executive departments. The Supreme Court, of course, has the best interests of the judiciary in mind here, but the nature of the problem, including the financing, is such that it cannot be solved through judicial diktats.