The quality and efficiency of court functioning can be improved with simple tweaks
Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra recently flagged
rising pendency in appeals lying with High Courts based on the findings
of the Supreme Court’s Arrears Committee. He has since directed High
Courts to prepare action plans for disposal of five and 10-year-old
cases. He has also asked for High Court Arrears Committees to
periodically review the situation. While it is crucial that a disposal
review mechanism is put in place, the manner in which judicial
performance is measured and accountability is exercised must be
carefully revisited.
For decades, the primary measure of court
efficiency has been case disposal rates. Public perception of court
performance and individual judges now hinges on the number of cases
pending before them. Though a crucial indicator, it also puts pressure
on judges to dispose of as many cases as possible, a problematic
situation as it does not consider the quality of adjudication itself.
Neither does it shed light on the exact nature of cases that have
remained pending the longest, or the stage at which pendency recurs the
most. Since these parameters are not measured, they are often
disregarded in the discourse on court performance.
To begin with,
courts themselves must start analysing historical case data and
introduce focussed interventions to counter specific case types or
stages at which the case pipeline is clogged.
Impact of listing techniques
The
discourse on case pendency has largely revolved around delayed
appointments and vacancies. Our study of case data of a High Court over
five years showed how certain cases listing practices influenced case
movement and harboured pendency.
First, listing patterns were
generally erratic, with the number of matters listed for the same
courtroom ranging from 1 to 126 a month. In some courtrooms, it was
80-120 cases for a month.
Second, a large number of cases listed
in a day meant that inevitably, matters listed towards the end of the
day remained left over. Thus, cases in the final stages of hearing most
often clogged the case pipeline.
Third, old pending matters barely
made it to court. Our case data over three years showed that 91% of
them remained unheard despite being allotted a separate day and specific
judges. Some experts point out that these cases were listed for the
second half of the day but would eventually never come up for hearing
because of the large number of other urgent and routine matters listed.
Advocates also tend to become disinterested in older cases in which
clients have given up or stopped paying.
Spurring case movements
One
way to accelerate case movement is by making case listing more
systematic. Here, courts must assess their performance based on the
actual number of cases being heard. Listing more than 100 cases a day
may look to be an impressive work schedule for a judge, but we found
that it is very rare for all of them to be heard. Cause list preparation
can be made more scientific if supported by a consistent study of the
variance in the number of cases listed across courts, identifying the
exact stages at which cases are clogging the pipeline for the longest
duration, and the nature of cases left over. This will also ensure that
only as many cases as can be reasonably heard will be listed on a daily
basis.
Second, the cause list should have cases methodically
distributed by type and stage. The court can decide on a minimum and
maximum number for particular matters. A senior counsel of the Supreme Court emphasised
the need to tweak listings such that final hearings are the first
matters a judge hears in a day as it requires his complete attention. In
the cause list we studied, such hearings were listed at the end,
inevitably accounting for the largest leftovers.
Third, disposing
of old and pending matters must be prioritised. Despite allotting two
days in week to hearing these matters for most of the day, the High
Court we studied had a massive docket of old pending cases. Their rate
of case movement in newer matters (taken up on all other days of the
week) was much faster than case movement recorded on specific days where
old cases were listed. A solution would be to implement a policy where
no adjournments are granted for frivolous reasons.
Scientific
listing has clear benefits. It will introduce standardisation across
courts and help disincentivise judges from using discretionary practices
in the number and nature of cases listed before them. It will promote
fairness — a reasonable number of cases would be listed every day, and
distributed across the day based on stage and case type.
Another
benefit would be better quality of adjudication. With an ever-increasing
caseload, it is only fair to question the quality of decision-making.
The Supreme Court, in April, remanded a case back to a High Court due to
the poor quality of judgment (there were neither recorded submissions
of the parties nor references to the relevant legal provisions used).
The
quality and efficiency of court functioning can be improved with simple
tweaks. Therefore, it is time that the judiciary as an institution
opens itself to the services of competent external agencies that can
help them record, manage and analyse their data better, to build and
sustain a healthy institution.
Amrita
Pillai and Sumathi Chandrashekaran are Research Fellow and Senior
Resident Fellow, respectively, at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy,
Delhi
Courtesy: https://www.thehindu.com
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