CJI Sanjiv Khanna Cites Einstein, Says Judicial Woes Should Be Dealt With Renewed Vision
The chief justice of India says that the quantum of cases flowing through Indian courts is staggering.
The 51st chief justice of India flagged certain areas of concern that plague the judicial system while speaking at the Constitution Day celebrations at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
CJI Sanjiv Khanna said that the quantum of cases flowing through Indian courts was staggering. "This year alone, our judicial system has received over 2.08 crore cases in district courts, around 16.6 lakh in high courts, and around 54,000 in the Supreme Court," he said.
Against this backdrop, he said that it is not surprising that over 5 crore cases are pending at the district and high court level.
These numbers reflect a challenge, and yet, they represent the deep trust citizens place in our courts as the ultimate arbiters of justice.CJI Sanjiv Khanna
Referring to the issue of a large number of undertrial prisoners languishing in jails, Justice Khanna remarked that the limited judicial workforce worked wonders in delivering justice at an exceptional pace.
"In 2022, despite an influx of 18 lakh new inmates, the judiciary facilitated the release of around 15 lakh prisoners, out of which 3 lakh undertrials were released within their first year, achieving a 69% release rate," he said.
However, the CJI said that there is a need to decriminalise laws to ebb the inflow of undertrials to jails.
On the need for Judicial Impact Assessment, Justice Khanna said availability of judicial statistics in today's data-driven era presents an untapped opportunity to conduct a thorough impact assessment of laws.
"JIA is a tool to identify, modify, repeal and re-enact laws and their execution. It enables us to take corrective steps where the law is burdensome for people to follow, or where its implementation is problematic," he remarked.
Justice Khanna pointed to various instances to back the idea of the JIAs. For example, he said that the backlog of cheque-bounce cases in district courts have reached alarming proportions, with nearly 8.69% of cases pending.
He said that in an endeavour to increase early access to legal aid, the court has provided legal assistance to more than 25,000 beneficiaries at pre-arrest stage in police stations, and about 1.4 lakh at the remand stage. However, he noted that a majority of the citizens are still unaware of the existence of this right, which makes it crucial to expand the reach-out initiatives.
Quoting Albert Einstein’s famous words "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them", Justice Khanna said that to move forward, "we must rethink, reimagine, and act with a renewed vision".
