Speaking to Communalism Combat and Newsclick in an exclusive 11 minute interview, Ms Jaiswal spoke of the developments in the highest curt of the land, arising out of the unprecedented move by four of the five senior most judges in addressing the people of India through a press conference yesterday, January 12, 2018.

“The Judges brought out their agony at the functionings within the Supreme Court. It is an unfortunate day in the history of the judicial system and I wish it never happens again:” Kamini Jaiswal

“CJI has always been one among equals though in some administrative matters and as Master of the Rosterhe allocates matters to different benches”: Kamini Jaiswal

“With power comes a duty and the duty is to use the power of Master of the Roster in a judicious manner”: Kamini Jaiswal

“There are well settled guideines to exercise this power. Matters are categorised and allocated to different benches according to categories”: Kamini Jaiswal

“When you file a matter you are expected to categorise it and then it is allocated according to the categories. Sensitive matters with far reaching consequences are generally allocated to senior Judges”: Kamini Jaiswal

“The CJI cannot pick up matters and allocate them, especially those which have consequences to the party in power, according to his whims, breaking established practice”: Kamini Jaiswal

“Justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done”: Kamini Jaiswal

“When there is arbitrariness, the other Judges cannot be silent spectators”: Kamini Jaiswal

“Yes, the SC needs to be sensitive to the poor, the people. There are people languising in jails whose matters are not heard for yeaars on end because they do not have the lakhs of rupees to pay fees of senior counsel”: Kamini Jaiswal

“There must be transparency in the functioning of the Supreme Court, at every level”: Kamini Jaiswal

“Law associations and bodies are divided. If we had been united and cared about the quality of justice delivery this would not have happened. There are allegations of financial irrerularites. If lawyers were not involved, how would these allegations every come to be made?” Kamini Jaiswal

“The Principal Secretary to the PMO N. Misra had no business visiting the CJI today especially when this was a matter concerning the independence and integrity of the SC”: Kamini Jaiswal

“There is an Undeclared Emergency in the Country. People of a certain class are scared of what they eat, what they wear, they are being targeted. People in Gujarat voting against the party in power are afraid to say so. If this is not an undeclared emergency what is?” Kamini Jaiswal

“I believe we will come out of this unprecedented crisis”: Kamini Jaiswal

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The Thiruvarur district court took, on average, two years to dispose a civil case–the best among Tamil Nadu’s courts. Identifying high-performing lower courts and replicating their best practices can make an immediate impact to reduce pendency of cases.
 
India’s judicial delays are legendary, and its shortage of judges well-known, as IndiaSpend has reported (here, here and here). Yet, despite the constraints, some courts manage to perform better than others, sometimes significantly so. Data can help identify such courts, as well as their innovations and best practices, so that these can be replicated in other courts.
 
India has over 600 district courts. Identifying the high performers and replicating their best practices in other courts can make an immediate impact.
 
Here’s an example from Tamil Nadu.
 
Tamil Nadu illustrates India’s problem
 
Without standardisation in data across lower courts, their performance cannot be compared directly. So, we studied Tamil Nadu, whose average duration of pendency of cases approximates the national average.
 

 
Also, the Madras High Court is one of the few in the country whose latest annual report, for 2015, provides a detailed analysis of the lower courts under its jurisdiction.

 
Civil case takes, on average, three years to conclude
 
Within Tamil Nadu, let’s identify the laggard courts.
 

 
The state average for pendency duration of civil cases is 2.95 years–a civil case takes about three years to reach a conclusion. Ariyalur is the worst performing district in this regard–a civil case takes 4.65 years on average, that is, 50% slower than the state average.
 
Thiruvarur performs the best with an average pendency duration of just two years.

 
For criminal cases, average pendency duration is 3.23 years for all of Tamil Nadu. Madurai performs exceedingly well with an average pendency duration of 1.75 years, while Perambalur is the slowest with an average pendency duration of 5.29 years. Kancheepuram performs poorly in both civil and criminal cases, being significantly slower than the state average–it takes four years to resolve civil cases as against the state average of three, and takes 4.3 years to resolve criminal cases, as opposed to the state average of 3.2 years.
 
Cases accumulate when the rate of disposal is lower than the rate at which new cases are instituted. Tamil Nadu accumulated 43,973 cases in 2015. Of these, 36,945 were civil and 7,028 criminal cases.
 
Here’s a look at the best and worst performing district courts with respect to case accumulation.
 

 
First, the civil cases: Of the 32 districts in Tamil Nadu, only five are disposing of more cases than the number of cases instituted, with Ariyalur performing the best and Chennai the worst.
 
Chennai lower courts accumulate more than 6,000 civil cases each year, while Ariyalur courts dispose of 1,000 cases from its pending pile each year. If this continues, Ariyalur courts will dispose of all their pending cases in nine years, after accounting for new cases that will be instituted each year.
 
The top three cities of Tamil Nadu–Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai–have the highest case accumulation rate.
 

 
Next, the criminal cases: Chennai lower courts perform the best in disposing of criminal cases–they conclude 7,700 criminal cases more than instituted each year. At this rate, Chennai will dispose of all its pending cases in 5.4 years. This is far better than any other district in the state.
 
Coimbatore’s lower courts are the slowest in disposing of criminal cases too.
 
What vacancies have to do with efficiency
 
We also analysed the number of judicial vacancies across all lower courts in Tamil Nadu. There are no significant differences in the number of vacancies between various lower courts, so the huge difference in their performances cannot be explained solely by shortage of judges.
 
The answer would seem to lie in procedural innovations, which needs to be analysed and documented at the high performing courts.
 
Our key point is: District courts can learn from each other’s successes and failures. For example, Chennai courts may learn from Ariyalur courts how to better dispose of civil cases, and may learn from their own experience with disposing of criminal cases.
 
A nationwide analysis is possible if we have standardised data to compare lower courts across the country. There is an urgent need for collecting case data in a structured and standardised format across the various courts in India. This will enable deeper insights and precise policy prescriptions.
 
While long-term issues such as shortage of judges grab policymakers’ attention, they must also tackle the immediate problems. In the near term, immediate improvements are possible by horizontally replicating proven procedural innovations.
 
(Mathur is the Executive Director at Vision India Foundation, a non-profit policy research and training organisation based in New Delhi. Prasath is a Research Intern with Vision India Foundation.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 
 

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