Column

Courts cannot be wrong.No pun intended. Their decisions are based on various ingredients that are brought before them. The time required for arriving at a fast decision, however, depends entirely on the judicial sense of a judge.

Needless to say fresh cooking is always preferred over the one which has been served straight from the freezer.

The high court most overburdened with backlog of cases in India is Allahabad HC. It is currently seized with, what it says, “a question of public importance” raised by the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee regarding the expenses incurred on using the private vehicles procured by state’s public transport buses to facilitate people attend the meetings addressed by prime ministers during their trips to the state between 1981 and 1987.

In other words the issue related to the trips made by the PMs 30 years ago.The then ruling party had also secured some vehicles from the state transport body. Now the party has received bills from the UPSRTC under the aegis of Mayawati. Even the state government has been asked to make good of the losses caused to the exchequer due to the deployment of the fleet of state buses and private vehicles.

It is learnt that the Congress party, which is not very strong in the Mayaland, has agreed to pay the money. But it has concerns over footing the bill for the use of government and private vehicles that had been used for maintaining the law and order during the PMs visits.

That’s the issue that the High Court has decided to delve on keeping in view the “public importance” involved in it.

It wouldn’t be out of place to note that 21 high courts are currently functioning with utmost deficient strength.

According to government statistics, there were 288 vacancies in all HCs end April last. These HCs have whopping backlog of cases of about 42 lakh. This figure is included in the sordid national pendency of about 3.2 crore cases.

There have been a number of terms used for tardy dispensation. ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ has been used very frequently.

There’s another term coined by the Supreme Court itself: ‘judgment delayed is justice denied’.

One of reasons cited by the top court for it was that judges work overtime and they could forget the arguments and facts brought forth before them during the proceedings and if a judgment isn’t pronounced within maximum two months of completion of hearing, it could cause tremendous damage to the justice itself.

Thus, it’s imperative in public interest to frame guidelines for specifying the areas that could be examined by the courts and the time given for their disposal. Malicious prosecutions based on forged documents and fake affidavits must be thrown out at the beginning of the proceedings. Those who propel forgery on dispensation system should be given a berth in the safe haven of a prison.