POLITY

JUDICIAL REFORM:
Back Ground: Justice delay; Rule of Law Project; Article 21 of the Constitution
Meaning:
Why: infirmity(weak) of the legal and judicial system which is responsible for this gross
denial of justice to the under trial prisoners in India which is solely responsible for delay
in disposal of cases.
Present Situation: Currently, data for 10 High Courts includes 5,66,000 cases and
26,87,362 hearings. Each court has an average of 22,000 hearings a day. Every judge
hears roughly 70 cases a day, which would be about 350 a week. This means that a
judge gets about six minutes to hear each case. On an average, it takes between 1000
and 1600 days for a case to be disposed of - not court days but calendar days.

Increase Pendency of Cases & delay in Justice delivery

Complex Procedures , Inaccessibility & High Cost
Loss of Faith in Judiciary
Marginalization of Poor & Illiterate
Need for sppedy Justice in cases related to Ill-Treatment of women & others
Increased Violence against Women in Urban Areas
Decline in the Quality of Judicial Officers in subordinate Judiciary

Contemporary:
justice being delayed, is denied.
Even Article 21 of the Constitution has been read to include the right to a speedy
trial, and quick justice is now considered indispensable. However, the course of
justice often prevents it.
Delay in trial by itself constitutes denial of justice. Any and all kinds of delay in a
system leads to the failure of the justice delivery system and India is certainly a
gross victim to this problem. Failure to take correctional measures with
alacrity(smartness) will certainly undermine the very foundation of Criminal trial
Law.
The truly unfortunate issue of the problem is that nobody really knows why there is
so much delay. Why does the legal process take so much time?
There have been a number of initiatives to identify the factors for delay. Most of
them have been focussed studies using a small set of cases and data from courts
themselves. Even the report by the 245th Law Commission states that there is no
scientific data available to analyse the problem meaningfully.
This non-availability of a large enough set of data has obstructed wide-ranging and
meaningful analysis. As a response to the problem of lack of data, The Rule of Law

Project at Daksh (an initiative that works with quantitative research to map
administration of justice in India) is putting together a database of all pending
cases in a searchable, reportable online format.understanding of pendency and
delay needs a coherent database that is standardised across the board.
Judcial delay is not a problem only for the state or for the judiciary. What matters is
that cases be heard and dealt with in a timely manner, for the sake of the litigant.
What we hope is that our database will assist a wide-ranging analysis of the
problem of pendency and that this can include the social, political and economic
fallouts of delayed justice. Judicial reform can be more effective if it is methodical
and does not rely on random, on-the-fly solutions.

BRINGING POLITICAL PARTIES UNDER RTI:

Background: 6-National Parties, Corruption, Accountability, Transparency,
Why to bring Political parties under RTI?
A) Check Financial Irregularities among Political parties
B) To find the Source of Donation & favours expected from the Political Party
when they come to power.
C) Deals between Political Parties & Business houses which result in act of
corruption
D) If Political Parties come under RTI, they have to open up their financial
transactions, donations they receive & expenses they incur for Scrutiny.
POSITIVES: Will help in bringing down the levels of corruption & make political
parties more accountable.