More litigants in India than US, Canada

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, March 22: Two out of every 100 people in India are litigants. According to statistics compiled by the Law Commission, one person out of 55 generates a case every year. Around 20 million new cases are filed every year. Despite so many cases being filed in the country, India ranks the lowest when it comes to per capita legal cases. And there are not enough judges to deal with the cases being filed.
In its report, the commission says that delays in disposal of cases and the increasing backlog can be ascribed to the paucity of judges. The commission points out that India has the lowest number of judges among the major democracies of the world. Judge-population ratio in India is 10.05 judges per million people as against 50.09 in the United Kingdom, 57.07 in Australia, 75.02 in Canada and 107 in the United States.
No wonder then that 1.56 crore cases have been pending in various courts in the country. The number of cases pending in High Courts amount to 48 lakh and in the Supreme Court it has touched 46,000. About two decades ago, the commission had recommended a five-fold increase in the strength of the judiciary to 50 judges per million people. The aim was to achieve a ratio of 107 judges per million people by 2000. But neither the commission’s recommendations nor the repeated reminders of successive Chief Justices of the SC could bring this to fruition.
Taking a serious view of this, the SC has now directed that there should be at least 10 per cent increase in the number of judges every year to clear the mounting backlog of cases. The commission estimates that Rs 30,000 crore is needed to increase the number of courts in the country. There are about 13,000 courts in all the states put together and the commission wants to increase this to 60,000.