NEW DELHI: The law ministry has informed a high-level committee of the Supreme Court that at least 2,300 courtrooms were added in the last three years across the country, enough for augmenting the strength of the judiciary in subordinate courts to bring down pendency of cases.
Senior SC judge, Justice H L Dattu, heading the apex court’s committee on court management, met senior officials of the law ministry on Monday to review the situation on court infrastructure in different parts of the country and increasing judges’ strength.
The review assumes significance considering that Chief Justice of India Justice R M Lodha had a day before expressed concern saying judiciary had suffered due to lack of financial resources. The CJI had said that "less than 0.5% of the central budget is spent on judiciary".
The CJI was critical of the government as he said judiciary was accorded lower priority in its budget exercise. He pointed out how in the 2014-15 budget, out of a total expenditure of Rs 17.60 lakh crore, only 0.11% was allocated for judiciary.
Sources in the law ministry, however, said fund allocation was not the only the reason behind lack of court infrastructure in some states. A number of states like Punjab, Gujarat and Delhi have augmented their court infrastructure and significantly brought down their pendency of cases.
The government has cleared a proposal for augmenting the strength the subordinate judiciary by over 1,400 – from current sanctioned strength of 18,000 judges to 19,421. Similarly, for high courts, the government has approved increasing the sanctioned strength from 906 at present to over 1,100.
Sources said the apex court would soon initiate recruitment of additional judges for the subordinate courts so that pendency could be restricted. Subordinate courts account for over 2.5 crore cases out of a total of 3.2 crore pending.