New Delhi: Continuing to express concern over low judge-population ratio in the country, Chief Justice of India TS Thakur on Sunday said that 'we require more than 70,000 judges to clear pending cases'. He said the matter was brought to the notice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently with a plea to make the appointments quickly.
“While we (judiciary) remain keen to ensure that judges’ appointments are made quickly, the machinery involved with the appointment of judges continue to grind very slowly,” Justice Thakur said, adding around 170 proposals for appointment of HC judges were now pending with the government.
Justice Thakur was addressing a gathering of legal luminaries on the occasion of centennial celebrations of the first sitting of the circuit bench of High Court for Odisha at Cuttack. He said access to justice is a fundamental right and governments cannot afford to deny it to the people.
“Access to justice is a fundamental right and the government cannot afford to deny the people their fundamental right,” he said.
Shortage of judges is one of the formidable challenges the judiciary is facing in the country now, the CJI said, adding, out of some 900 sanctioned posts of judges in different High Courts of the country, there are over 450 vacancies which need to be filled up immediately.
Dwelling on the poor judge-population ratio, Justice Thakur said while the Law Commission of India in 1987 had suggested for having 44,000 judges to effectively tackle the then number of pending cases, the country today has only 18,000 judges.
“Thirty years down the line we continue to work 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,” he said.
(With PTI inputs)
