The 14-page report suggests an increased coordination between the government and the judiciary while addressing the need to cut down on pendency, delays and backlog of cases
The chapter on Judiciary in the Economic Survey 2018, tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, focuses on timely justice as the need of the hour. Introducing the chapter with quotes from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Sunny Deol's iconic bluster Tarikh-par-Tarikh...(dates followed by dates), the survey articulates the frustrations of delayed-and-hence-denied justice.
The 14-page report suggests an increased coordination between the government and the judiciary while addressing the need to cut down on pendency, delays and backlog of cases while stressing on the effective enforcement of contracts for efficient economic growth and development.
According to the report, India jumped thirty places to break into the top 100 for the first time in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report (EODB), 2018. "The rankings reflect the government's reform measures on a wide range of indicators. India leaped 53 and 33 spots in the taxation and insolvency indices, respectively, on the back of administrative reforms in taxation and passage of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016," the report says.
The survey has shown that with the current working capacity pegged at 63.6 per cent, delays and pendency of economic cases are high and mounting in the Supreme Court, High Courts, Economic Tribunals, and Tax Department, which is taking a severe toll on the economy in terms of stalled projects, mounting legal costs, contested tax revenues, and reduced investment.
Analysis of six prominent appellate tribunals that deal exclusively with high stakes commercial matters reveal two patterns. Firstly, there is a high level of pendency across the six tribunals — estimated at about 1.8 lakh cases, and pendency has risen sharply over time. The survey reports that nearly every tribunal started with manageable caseloads, disposing instituted cases every year, but that soon spiraled out of control leading to almost 25 percent increase in the number of unresolved cases since 2012.
The survey has also admitted that creation of tribunals has done nothing to alter the rate of pendency of cases at the High Courts. At the end of 2017, there was a backlog of almost 3.5 million cases at the high courts. "While the volume of economic cases is smaller than other case categories, their average duration of pendency is arguably the worst of most cases, nearly 4.3 years for 5 major High Courts. The average pendency of tax cases is particularly acute at nearly 6 years per case," the report states.
It is important to mention, referring to the Centre's experience with GST, the survey highlights the success of cooperative federalism in bringing about transformational economic policy changes. The report suggests that perhaps a version of this "Cooperative Separation of Powers" should be applied to the relationship between the judiciary and the executive/legislature while respecting clear lines of demarcation and separation of powers between the two to preserve independence and legitimacy.
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