411 judges’ posts lying vacant in High Courts – RTI report
Kothagudem: No High Court in India has had the full working strength of judges for the past 30 years, the Union Department of Justice told a human rights activist in Kothagudem. The information was revealed by the Department of Justice Director (Appointment) and First Appellate Authority, Anvita Sinha, to the rights activist and law student, […]
Kothagudem: No High Court in India has had the full working strength of judges for the past 30 years, the Union Department of Justice told a human rights activist in Kothagudem. The information was revealed by the Department of Justice Director (Appointment) and First Appellate Authority, Anvita Sinha, to the rights activist and law student, Manideep of Pinapaka in the district in reply to an RTI application, recently.
According to the Department of Justice, as of January 1, 2021, as many as 411 judges’ posts were vacant in 25 High Courts in the country as against the sanctioned strength of 1,079. The current working strength of judges is 668 in the High Courts. It may be noted that the vacancy of judges has been on the rise since 1991 when the vacancy position was 99 against the sanctioned strength of 542. It increased to 187 in 2001, then to 286 in 2011 against the sanctioned strength of 647 and 895 respectively. “It is quite perplexing to see that no High Court worked with its full strength of judges for a long time of three decades. The Allahabad High Court has the highest number of 64 judges posts vacant, followed by Calcutta with 36 and Punjab and Haryana with 35 vacancies,” the activist said.
“If the shortage of judges is at this level in the HCs, it will be even more in the district and magistrate courts. The government’s failure to fill up judges posts amounts to human rights violations and there is a need for people to question it,” Manideep told ‘Telangana Today’. He noted that more than four crore cases are pending in Indian courts and of them, around 12.3 per cent of cases are in HCs. As per the statistics available with the government between 2019 and 2020, pending cases in HCs increased by 20 per cent. Manideep further said that over three lakh under trial prisoners from underprivileged sections are languishing in jails due to the delay in solving their cases. Nearly 1.5 lakh are incarcerated for over a year and another 5,000 are in jails for more than five years.
“Many a time it happens that undertrial prisoners are falsely booked. Remaining undertrial in false cases is a serious violation of human rights for the poor, who cannot afford bail sureties,” he lamented. The government must appoint judges in full strength. Many courts in the country do not even have toilet facilities at least. Steps to address such facilities need to be taken forthwith, Manideep demanded. People need to take an affidavit from political leaders during the election with an assurance that they will take steps to strengthen the judiciary, he said while appealing to the lawyers to offer free legal services to innocent undertrial prisoners.
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