President Murmu wake-up call to judiciary: Poor afraid of going to courts

This comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at the inaugural session of the conference, called for quick disposal of cases of crimes against women, saying that the faster the decisions are taken in such cases, “the greater will be the assurance of safety for half the population”.

In her address, Murmu said, “I have seen that the poor people of the villages are afraid of going to court. They become a participant in the judicial process of the court only under great compulsion. Often they tolerate injustice silently because they feel that fighting for justice can make their lives more miserable. For them, going away from the village to the court even once becomes a cause of great mental and financial pressure. In such a situation, many people cannot even imagine the pain that the poor experience due to the culture of adjournment. Every possible measure should be taken to change this situation.”

“We know and hear about White Coat Hypertension. Many people’s blood pressure increases in the hospital environment. I feel that in the same way the stress of a common person increases in a courtroom environment. After studying this, perhaps this condition can be named Black Coat Syndrome,” the President said.

Expressing concerns over delay in delivering justice even in heinous crimes like rape, Murmu said that when a decision in such crimes comes after a generation has passed, “the common man feels that there is a lack of sensitivity in the judicial process”.

“The poor people of the village consider all judges, from the lower court to the top court, as God because justice is found there. There is a saying that in God’s house there is delay but not darkness. But for how long? How many days can it take? 32 years, 12 years, 20 years, 2 years, we should think. Then whoever gets justice after 32 years, perhaps the smile will disappear from their face, life itself will disappear. One should think deeply about this,” she said.

Although the President did not refer to any specific case, on August 20, a POCSO court in Ajmer convicted and sentenced six persons to life imprisonment in a sex scandal case that emerged nearly 32 years ago.

Murmu also lauded the Supreme Court for making Section 479 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) applicable retrospectively to first-time offenders, making it possible for them to be released on bail if they have completed one-third of the maximum sentence prescribed under the law for the offence they are charged with.

Addressing the gathering, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, while referring to efforts to modernise the judiciary, said: “These developments have a direct impact on our ability to reduce pendency.”

He said the “current national average disposal rate stands at 95%” but “despite progress, tackling pending cases remains a challenge”.

The CJI said that “increasing our disposal-to-filing ratio hinges on attracting skilled personnel”. “At the district-level vacancies in judicial personnel stand at 28% and of non-judicial staff at 27%. In order for the disposals to outweigh the institution of cases, the courts must work beyond the capacity of 71% to 100%. To fill the vacancies, the conference deliberated upon the criteria for selection of judges and standardising the recruitment calendars for all vacancies,” he said. “The time has come to think of national integration by recruiting members to the judicial services across the narrow walls of regionalism and state-centered selections.”

He said the Supreme Court committee on reducing arrears of cases has laid out an action plan for this through case management. The three stages of the action plan includes the preparatory stage of forming district-level case management committees to identify target cases, undated cases and reconstruction of records. “The second stage, which is ongoing, aims to resolve cases which have been pending before the courts for 10-20 years, 20-30 years and more than 30 years,” the CJI said, adding that “from January to June 2025, the judiciary shall execute the third phase of clearing the backlogs of cases pending for over a decade”.

He said strategies like pre-litigation dispute resolution can also be an option to tackle backlog, adding that in the recent Lok Adalat conducted by the apex court, “almost 1,000 cases were disposed of amicably within 5 working days”.

CJI Chandrachud said that addressing infrastructure gaps requires a strong government-court partnership. Pointing out that “only 6.7% of our court infrastructure at the district level is female friendly”, he asked “is this acceptable in a nation where the basic level of recruitment in some states see over 60 to 70% of women joining?”

“We must also ensure that our courts provide a safe and accommodating environment for all members of our society, in particular the vulnerable groups such as women, persons with disability, members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and people across the socio-economic landscape. With an increasing number of women coming into the judiciary we must also confront the biases which we may unwittingly have towards our colleagues at the Bar and the Bench,” he said.

He pointed out that “we are in the process of setting up a systematic, nationwide curriculum for judicial training and harnessing technology to track our progress”.

“The new curriculum promises to bring innovative training methods, a thematic framework, uniformity in training calendars, integrating judicial training with IT, recasting the National Judicial Academy to fill knowledge gaps and most importantly to establish a feedback and assessment methodology,” the CJI said.

He also called for bridging “the perceived gap between the district judiciary and the High Courts” and said “this gap is a product of colonial subordination”.