Appointing Ad Hoc Judges Is A Short Term Solution
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-04-23 09:29:39
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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The Supreme Court has done well to invoke Article 224A of the constitution to clear the way for the appointment of retired judges as ad hoc judges in the High Courts. With pendency of cases in high courts rising to unmanageable levels (hindering justice in the process as delayed justice is no justice at all) and with regular appointments not taking place at the desired speed, this rarely used provision needed to be activated to clear the backlog of cases.
The then CJI Ranjan Gogoi had written to the Prime Minister in June 2019 suggesting that retired Supreme Court and High Court judges be allowed tenure appointments under Article 128 and 224A of the constitution to clear mounting cases. As of now, figures show a backlog of over 57 lakh cases and a vacancy level of 40% in all high courts. Hence, while invoking Article 224A, the bench headed by CJI S A Bobde said that "the challenge of mounting arrears and existing vacancies requires recourse to Article 224A". But it also has to be acknowledged there is often no correlation between the level of vacancy and the pendency of cases as many high courts have huge backlog despite having low vacancy.
As a purely temporary measure, tenure appointment of judges is one of the best ways to clear backlog of cases. Having said that, such appointments can never be a substitute for regular appointments and the judiciary and the government must sort out their differences, individually and collectively, to ensure that regular appointment of judges takes place at the given time and there are not too many vacancies in either the Supreme Court or the high courts.
The court has issued guidelines mandating that such appointments must only be made if the vacancy in any high court exceeds 20% of the sanctioned bench strength or when more than 10% of the backlog of pending cases are over five years old; when cases in a particular category are pending for over five years, or when the rate of disposal is slower than the rate of institution of fresh cases. It has also said that the tenure of such ad hoc judges must not be more than two or three years. Since the court has termed these appointments as 'transitory methodology" which will not come in the way of regular appointments, both the judiciary and the government must simultaneously work to bring the process of regular appointment of judges back on track.
