Govt puts judicial reforms on fast track

NEW DELHI: The government has put implementation of judicial reforms on fast track. The law ministry has called a high-level advisory council meeting on January 21 to be attended by the law commission chairman Justice A P Shah, MoS Home Kiren Rijiju and the Supreme Court secretary general.

Sources said the government has also extended invitation to the law ministers from J&K and Andhra Pradesh besides the newly-appointed Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya and top law officers, including the attorney general and solicitor general.

Improvement in the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) to simplify processing and expedite case management are among some of the issues on the agenda. The government is keen to push video-conferencing between courts and prisons and wants assistance from the apex court to implement an ongoing project.

Already five courts are running the video conferencing facility. This is likely to be extended to 500 courts immediately. There is a proposal to amend the Negotiable Instruments Act to make all cheque bounce cases to be decided through Lok Adalats. All verdicts given by Lok Adalats will be made binding and final on disputing parties.

Besides, the government is also proposing changes in the Motor Vehicles Act where all cases related to traffic challans will be tackled only through alternative dispute resolution forum. The two changes are likely to reduce the pendency list by at least one-third.

Also on the agenda is a proposal to install a software --already running as a pilot project in Tihar jail-- to all prisons across the country. This software records data on all prison inmates with classified case history and date of their release.

The software will alert both the prison authorities and a central monitoring agency on the undertrials who must be released based on the amendments made in the 436A of CrPC. The law allows compulsory bail to undertrials who have served half the prison term if they were to be convicted.

Vacancies in subordinate and high courts are a major concern for the government. The government is keen on implementing a recommendation made by the law commission on requirement of additional courts. There are 19,518 judges posts for the subordinate courts while the existing strength is around 15,000.

Of the total pendency of 3.2 crore cases, pendency in subordinate courts is around 2.8 crore. High courts have pendency of about 44 lakh cases. The government has already submitted to the apex court the urgency of appointing new judges in HCs where at least 348 posts are vacant.

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