Issues associated with Judicial Vacancies:

♤ Judiciary requires more than 70,000 judges to clear the mounting backlog of cases.

♤ Judicial infrastructure has not kept pace with the rate of litigation. If all the posts of judges in the judiciary are filled, then there wouldn’t be enough courtrooms to accommodate all of them.

♤ Lack of consensus among the collegium members over recommendations. There is further tussle between executive and judiciary over appointments, due to which many posts have remained vacant.

To uphold the rule of law both these interrelated problems require steps from executive as well as judiciary. Following steps needs to be taken:

♤ As the economic cost of the delay is pegged at 0.5% of gross domestic product. There is urgent need for increased budgetary allocation to cope up with increased number of litigations.

♤ Government should speed up the process of drafting the memorandum of procedure with consensus of judiciary.

♤ Government and judiciary should initiate recruitment process six months prior to occurrence of vacancy.

♤ Frivolous cases should be dealt with a heavy hand and exemplary costs should be imposed on such litigation.

♤ Provide effective and continuous training for judges and court officers to enhance the quality of dispensation of Justice.

♤ Need to promote judicial education for enhancing the quality and improving the standards of justice.

♤ More focus on alternative dispute resolution mechanism like Lok Adalats, Arbitration and Conciliation etc. is required. Promoting Gram Nyayalayas is also desirable.

♤ Government, which is the biggest litigant, needs to simplify laws and enhance ease of doing business to avoid litigations in the first place.

♤ Other options, such as changes in procedure, improved quality of law graduates, greater use of information technology must all be explored to ameliorate the situation.