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Tag: Allahabad High Court

  • Justice on hold: India court crippled by a million-case backlog

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    The Allahabad High Court – one of India’s oldest and most prestigious, once graced by figures like India’s first premier Jawaharlal Nehru and future Supreme Court judges – is back in the spotlight.

    This time, though, for very different reasons.

    With more than a million cases pending, it is among the most overburdened courts in the country. Matters ranging from criminal trials to property and family disputes have been pending here for decades, leaving thousands of people in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, trapped in legal limbo.

    Consider Babu Ram Rajput, 73, a retired government employee who has been battling a property dispute for over three decades.

    He bought land at an auction in 1992, but the previous owner challenged the sale – and the case remains unresolved to this day.

    “I just hope my case is decided while I’m still alive,” Mr Rajput says.

    The high court’s struggle mirrors a broader crisis in India’s judiciary, where too few judges and a constant flood of cases have caused crippling delays.

    With a sanctioned strength of 160 that experts say has never been completely filled, the court is severely understaffed. Delays in police investigations, frequent adjournments, and poor infrastructure further add to the backlog, leaving the system stretched beyond capacity.

    Each judge faces hundreds of cases a day – sometimes over 1,000. With just five working hours, that’s less than a minute per case. In practice, many aren’t heard at all.

    Over a million cases are pending at the Allahabad High Court [Umang Poddar/BBC]

    Lawyers say urgent matters – like bail pleas or eviction stays – are heard first, pushing older cases further down the list.

    Senior lawyer Syed Farman Naqvi says courts often issue interim or temporary orders in urgent cases – but once the immediate need is met, the matter lingers as new cases pile up.

    Retired judge Amar Saran says the mounting backlog has forced judges into a “cut-grass approach” – issuing quick, standard orders, from nudging the government to act to directing lower courts to handle the matter.

    In April, the court confronted the scale of its delays while ruling on a rape and murder case pending for over 40 years. By the verdict’s delivery, four of the five convicted men had died. Ordering the sole surviving convict to surrender, the court admitted it regretted not ruling sooner.

    The backlog has even prompted legal action. Earlier this year, a group of Allahabad High Court lawyers petitioned for more judicial appointments, calling the court “paralysed” by a shortage of judges that leaves cases lingering for years.

    The crisis has caught the attention of India’s top court. In January, the Supreme Court called it “worrisome” that case listings at the Allahabad High Court are unpredictable, saying the system had completely collapsed.

    Uncertain hearing dates hit people hard, especially in vast Uttar Pradesh. Many travel hundreds of kilometres to Prayagraj where the court is located on just a few days’ notice for their hearing.

    Mr Rajput is from Kanpur, 200km (125 miles) from Prayagraj. He spends around four hours travelling each time his case is listed – yet can never be sure it will actually be heard.

    “I’m over 70,” he says. “I often learn just days in advance that my case is listed, “making travel a hassle.” He adds that many times his case isn’t heard because other matters take up the whole day.

    A man binds case files outside the Allahabad high court

    A man preparing court files outside the Allahabad High Court [Umang Poddar/BBC]

    Lawyers have long urged the court to set up another bench – a branch of the high court in a different city to ease access and speed up hearings – in the western part of the state. Currently, an additional bench exists in the city of Lucknow. A similar recommendation was made in 1985 by a government commission, but it has yet to be implemented.

    Earlier this year, the state government reportedly urged the high court to set up another bench, but the letter was later withdrawn for unknown reasons. The push for more benches isn’t limited to Uttar Pradesh; a 2009 Law Commission report said all states would benefit from additional high court branches.

    While new benches could help long-term, experts say quicker fixes – like appointing more judges – are needed.

    But the process is slow and complex: senior high court judges first shortlist candidates, then the list is reviewed by the state and federal governments, and the Chief Justice of India. After this, senior Supreme Court judges forward the final list to the federal government for appointment.

    Experts say picking the right candidates is often challenging. Former Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Govind Mathur notes that chief justices, often appointed from outside the state, may not know local lawyers or judges, complicating recommendations. Names can be rejected at any stage and remain confidential until the Supreme Court forwards them to the government.

    Last year, the Supreme Court recommended just one appointment for the Allahabad High Court, despite nearly half the seats being vacant. Some progress came this year with 15 new judges, but almost half the posts remain empty after retirements and transfers. Earlier this month, 26 more names were sent to the government, raising hopes – but the impact on the backlog remains uncertain.

    Experts say the backlog is so huge that even at full strength, each judge would handle over 7,000 pending cases. Some progress came this year, after 40 new judges were added – 24 of whom were appointed last week – but the backlog persists.

    Mr Mathur says that deeper judicial reforms – like a “uniform policy for hearing and disposing of cases” – are essential, rather than leaving it to individual judges.

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  • Why India’s Supreme Court remains ‘a men’s club’

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    India recently appointed new judges to the top court and some high courts. But the list has very few women.

    In September 2021, a photograph from the Indian Supreme Court of then chief justice NV Ramana flanked by his four female colleagues went viral.

    This was the highest-ever tally of female judges in the 34-member top court and was hailed as a “historic moment”.

    Many saw it as a turning point for India’s top judiciary and expressed the hope that it would start reversing the skewed gender gap in India’s top court.

    But four years later, that hope lies in tatters and the Supreme Court is back to being – as lawyer Sneha Kalita described it – “a men’s club”.

    Three of the women seen in that photograph with Justice Ramana – Justice Indira Banerjee, Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Bela M Trivedi – have since retired.

    And as no woman has been appointed to the top court since then, Justice BV Nagarathna is now the sole female judge there.

    “This is alarming. It’s nothing short of catastrophic,” Ms Kalita, a member of an association of female advocates who have filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding fair representation of women in courts, told the BBC.

    Historically, Indian judiciary has been dominated by men. From 1950, when the Supreme Court came into existence, it took 39 years for Justice Fathima Beevi to be appointed the country’s first female judge in 1989.

    “I opened a closed door,” she told news website Scroll in 2018. But in 75 years, the court has welcomed very few women – only 11 out of the 287 judges or a measly 3.8%.

    “With just one woman, we are back to near-zero representation in the top court. This has become a men’s club,” Ms Kalita says.

    India’s judiciary has been described as “an old boy’s club” [Getty Images]

    What is also troubling is that there are only 103 female judges compared with 670 males in the high courts – and at least four do not have a single woman.

    This low representation of women has come into sharp focus in recent weeks after the latest batch of appointments was made to the Supreme Court.

    The court had two vacancies to fill and it was expected that the Supreme Court collegium – which includes the chief justice and four senior-most judges and recommends names to the government – would use the opportunity to correct the acute gender imbalance.

    But in August-end, two high court judges – both male – were elevated to the role. Media reports say that at least three female high court judges in the country were senior than one of the elevated judges.

    The collegium’s other recent selections have also ignored women – Bombay High Court last week got 14 new judges, but only one was woman. For Allahabad High Court, the proposed list of 26 candidates includes only five women.

    This low representation of women in the top court as well as “in high courts across the country” prompted the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) to put out a strong statement expressing “deep disappointment” and “grave concern”.

    SCBA president and senior lawyer Vikas Singh told the BBC that “women make for 40% of all judges in lower judiciary, that is district courts and below, where recruitments are on merit and candidates are chosen through written exams and interviews”.

    “But in higher judiciary where they are selected by the collegium, they make for less than 10%. Something very drastic needs to be done. Effort must be made to look for more women,” he said.

    Most women lawyers the BBC spoke to welcomed the SCBA intervention. “I’m glad the bar association has raised it, it’s not a women’s problem. It reflects on us as a society,” said senior lawyer Madhavi Divan.

    NOIDA, INDIA OCTOBER 16: Leila Seth, first woman judge on the Delhi High Court and the first woman to become Chief Justice of a state High Court, at her home, during an interview on October 16, 2014 in Noida, India. (Photograph by Pradeep Gaur/Mint Via Getty Images)

    Justice Leila Seth was the first woman to become chief justice of a state high court – but she was never inducted in the top court [Getty Images]

    It’s not that all women judges are more gender sensitive – in the past, the BBC has reported on equally misogynistic judgements by male and female judges.

    But senior Advocate Jayna Kothari says India is a diverse country and diversity is important for judiciary too.

    “Supreme Court is for the entire country so it chooses judges from different high courts to reflect regional diversity. So, why not gender diversity? Women represent 50% of India’s population so they should have an equal representation in the judiciary too.”

    Different life experiences, she says, allow people to respond differently to a case which means that having people from diverse backgrounds will lead to better judicial outcomes and help get better judgments.

    Ms Kothari says studies also show that the mere presence of women on the bench stops other judges and lawyers from making gender insensitive comments.

    But the question still remains: how to get more women judges?

    Some have suggested a quota system – where a certain number of seats are reserved for women. They say this would force the judiciary to put its house in order. But critics say that could lower the standards as reservation and merit are contradictory.

    Ms Kalita disagrees – women judges and lawyers, like women everywhere, work harder, balancing home life and childcare with careers, she says.

    “Many women are much more meritorious than male colleagues. You can’t brush us aside just because we are women. This is discrimination,” she adds.

    Ms Kothari says the skewed gender ratio “must be seen as an important public issue, not just as a women’s issue” and that we must aim for 50% but can start with a more realistic goal of 30% in the next five years.

    “It should be a matter of pride to appoint women to higher judiciary. Having more women in the high courts and the Supreme Court will also encourage more women to join the legal profession and stay on.

    “Otherwise many women would think what’s the point of slogging so hard if we are not going to be be able to reach the top?” she asks.

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