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Supreme Court pulls up high courts over hiring of judges, says ‘if you can’t, we’ll do it for you’
Upset at the slow pace of recruitment of judges across the country, the Supreme Court on Thursday ordered all states and high courts to report on the status of efforts made by them and warned that the top court could look at centralised recruitment of judges if they didn’t act fast.
Upset at the slow pace of recruitment of judges across the country, the Supreme Court on Thursday ordered all states and high courts to report on the status of efforts made by them and warned that the top court could look at centralised recruitment of judges if they didn’t act fast.
“If you can’t fill up the vacancies, we will take over that task from you and we will make it a centralised process,” a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said after reviewing the recruitment of lower court judges in the country.
The top court felt that the approach to filling vacancies was casual.
Courts across the country are short of nearly 5,000 judicial officers, a reason that is counted as a key reason for the whopping 2.8 crore cases pending in courts. The sanctioned strength of judicial officers was 21,324, the report on subordinate courts said.
The situation has led to suggestions in two Supreme Court reports to increase the judicial manpower “manifold” -- at least seven times -- to overcome the crisis by appointing about 15,000 more judges in the coming few years.
Data shows that district courts across the country are grappling with a backlog of 2,81,25,066 civil and criminal cases in the period between July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. But a large number of matters, 1,89,04,222, were also disposed off during the period.
