Modi

Indian judiciary has expressed a serious concern over the poor judge-population ratio in the country. Chief Justice T. S. Thakur, Chief Justice of India, said on Monday at a legal function in the eastern state of Odisha’s Cuttack town (India) that India needed more than 70,000 judges to clear the pending legal cases.

He noted that while the Law Commission of India in 1987 had suggested for having 44,000 judges to effectively tackle the then number of pending cases, NAN reported that the country today had only 18,000 judges. In other words, the country will need about 52,000 more.

Thakur said 30 years down the line judges had been working with depleted strength.
“If you go by the number of people that have been added to the population, we may now require more than 70,000 judges to clear the pending cases.

The chief justice stressed that access to justice was a fundamental right, and shortage of judges is one of the formidable challenges the judiciary was facing now.
“The government cannot afford to deny the people their fundamental right. In fact, this is not the first time that the chief justice has raised the issue of low strength of judges in the country and pleaded before the government for the appointment of more judges to clear the legal cases pending for years,” he said.

A report noted that at a function in the national capital last month where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also present, he got emotional and broke down while speaking about the shortage of judges in the country.

He said the judiciary was stuck as nearly 4 million cases remained unattended to.