Gulam Rabbani :
Judge crisis is disrupting the trial process as more than 30 lakh cases are now pending in the Supreme Court and the lower courts across the country.
According to a statistics, more than four lakh cases are pending in both the divisions of the Supreme Court. But only 97 judges are working in the apex court.
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has only eight judges and the High Court (HC) Division has 89 judges. Three of the HC judges are conducting cases in the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) while four others are seriously sick.
The Chief Justice, Surendra Kumar Sinha, in a conference had recently said that he was facing trouble to form benches in the HC as there is judge crisis.
Supreme Court sources said, seven HC judges will go on retirement in 2017. This will increase the crisis definitely, they said.
On August 2016, Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha had a long meeting with Law Minister Anisul Haque when he advised the government to recruit eight Additional Judges in the High Court. But the government didn’t take any step in this regard yet.
There are 1655 posts for judges in lower courts across the country. But the 387 posts of them are still vacant. 1268 judges are working in the lower courts to conduct more than 27 lakh cases. But more than 200 judges are working in different other departments on deputation.
As the number of cases increasing day by day, it is difficult for the existing judges to conduct this large number of cases.
The Chief Justice said in ‘National Judicial Conference 2016’ on December 24, 2016 that the recruitment of judges in the lower courts take time as the Law Ministry didn’t requisite it in time. If the number of the judges got double then the disposal of cases could be increased, added the CJ.
According to another statistics, 107 judges work for every 10 lakh people in the United States, 75 judges in Canada, 51 in Britain, 41 in Australia and 18 in India. But in Bangladesh only 10 judges work for every 10 lakh people.
Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court and former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association Advocate Khandker Mahbub Hossain said that judges are recruited as per population ratio in other developed countries. We also demanded this in various times. But no government listened to us.
Now the CJ is saying about this. Hope, the government will take necessary steps to fulfil this demand. Otherwise, the people may lose confidence on Judiciary, said Khandker Mahbub.
