News report carried in The New Nation on Wednesday has said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Law and Parliamentary Affairs has laid emphasis on new appointment of at least 3,000 judges on emergency basis to deal with the backlog of 28 lakh cases at lower courts.
It said that the committee has discussed in all three reports in the meeting– two by the Law Commission and one by the Standing Committee itself on how to handle these hefty cases and came out with the suggestion for immediate appointment of several thousand new judges to clear the pending cases.
There is no doubt that the committee has raised concern rightly because 28 lakh cases are too much where according to some estimate not less than 2.8 crore people may be accused if 10 persons are involved in each case on an average.
It is so clear that the government is using court cases for reasons of political advantage. Hundreds of political opponents are in jail under police cases freely initiated. When the reason is politics then there can be innumerable cases as no real crimes are necessary for politically motivated cases to lodge.
Most noticeably, during the past three months when political movement of the opposition was big threat for the government the number of police cases shot up to a new height and everybody knows most of these cases were framed up to keep the opposition under constant fear of police action. So the courts are overburdened with unnecessary cases. As a result the judicial process is infected with corruption at every stage. Genuine criminal cases are unreasonably delayed for the large number of political cases.
To treat politics as a matter of criminal case and to deal opponents politically by ordering the police to give cases against them is a process severely affecting the peoples confidence in the justice system. Because politics is kept out of the judicial process to save the justice system.
The government withdrawal over 7,000 cases against the ruling party leaders and workers claiming these were false cases has to be accepted as natural where politics is controlled by police power.
Solution is not to appoint 3000 or more judges for handing of cases. The solution lies in stopping court cases to be used to serve the politics of the government in power. What is needed is to stop police to be used for initiating political cases to keep the need for appointment of more judges at public expenses unnecessary. The police should be asked not to accept politically motivated false cases making it too difficult for the courts to do justice where justice needed to be done speedily.
It is our strong view that the judiciary must discourage police to be used politically to delay justice. The judiciary is now independent and must assert its independence to save the judiciary from politics so that the people do not suffer indefinitely in jail as under trial prisoners.
