Perjury is also a way of litigation

The assassination of former railways minister Lalit Narayan Mishra 37 years ago continues to be a matter of judicial proceeding and this case is a classic example of derailed dispensation machinery.

Not only that the procedural loopholes have also been used to reopen another case relating to the assassination bid on the then chief justice AN Ray in 1975. An acquitted accused in Ray’s case has been asked to face the cross examination by Mishra murder accused.

It means the politically sensitive, cases cited as reasons for imposing Emergency in 1975, may end up in an inconclusive dispensation as some of the accused have died and others are failing in health due to their old age.
Be that as it may, it is not unsafe to point out that paucity of judges and deficit of time are also instrumental in mounting pressure of law suits.

It has been said that judicial dispensation and health care don’t earn laurels to the political governance, thus they have been subjected to utmost neglect. However, in the process, the legitimate consumers of justice system are denied the right to speedy justice but unscrupulous litigants reap rich dividends.
India has the lowest number of judges among the major democracies of the world.

There are 13.05 judges per 1 million people in India, as against Australia’s 58 per million, Canada’s 75, the UK 100, and the USA 130 per million. Mind you, India is the most populated country among all.

According to statistics regarding pending cases, the apex court has now run up a backlog of about 56,383 cases, which is said to be the highest in past decade.

At least 42 lakh cases are pending in the High Courts and about 2.8 crore backlog in the poorly manned 17,090 subordinate courts which are starved of 3,070 more judges to fill up their strength. The situation in the HCs isn’t any better.

A whopping 291 vacancies in various high courts are to be filled by the superior judiciary itself. Recently, the Allahabad High Court ruled that that conducting the collegium meeting by the chief justice or a high Court chief justice  and making recommendations for appointment of judges are constitutional duties, and its not a discretionary power.

“It’s certainly not discretion to delay in making recommendations” for filling up the vacant post of judges, it said. Recently, the top court quoted a lawyer’s argument articulating common man’s impression about litigation’.

“Make any false averment, conceal any fact, raise any plea, produce any false document, deny any genuine document, it will successfully stall the litigation, and in any case, delay the matter endlessly’’, it said.  It’s because even perjury has also become a way of life.