Answer:

Indian Judiciary has been battling multiple issues that have affected speed, efficiency and quality of justice. For example:

♤ Steady increase in number of cases reaching higher courts from lower levels, indicating substandard justice delivery.

♤ In 2015, approximately 25-30 million cases were pending in various courts.

♤ In 2015, there were about 400 vacancies of judges in 24 High Courts. Judge- population ratio of 10.5-11 to one million is one of the lowest in world.

♤ Corruption and lack of transparency in the appointment of judges.

♤ Issues such as large number of undertrails, long duration of resolution, inefficient and time consuming processes etc.

In this context, All India Judicial Services (AIJS) has been proposed through which district judges will get recruited centrally through an all-India examination and allocated to each State. The rationale of recruitment through AIJS is based on the following grounds:

♤ Wide selection pool: Through AIJS, judges will be selected at the national level and thus it is expected to make judiciary more professional and equitable leading to an improvement in the quality of judgments.

♤ Reduction in vacancy: It is expected to reduce vacancies by avoiding delays in examinations and recruitment.

♤ Attractive career option: Currently, the subordinate judiciary depends entirely on state level recruitment by respective High Courts. But the brighter among the law students do not join the state judicial services because they are not attractive. An ‘All India Service’ status with associated privileges may change this.

♤ Uniform standards: The measure of uniformity in the standards for selection will improve the quality of personnel in different High Courts, as one-third of the judges come there on promotion from the subordinate courts.

However, the idea has been criticized for not addressing core issues and creating new ones. For example:

♤ It ignores the fact that Bar Council of India has mismanaged legal education and there has been a lack of effort to improve the standard of legal education in the country.

♤ While efforts have been taken by the Supreme Court to promote uniform pay scales across States, pay is abysmally low when compared to the private sector.

♤ Trial court judges face similar problems in case of transfers and other issues as civil servants and have even lesser avenues for growth and promotion.

♤ Those High court judges appointed from District cadre are already in advanced stage of their careers and have shorter tenures than judges appointed directly from the Bar.

New problems that may arise due to AIJS:

♤ Being a centralised recruitment, it risks preventing the less privileged from entering judicial services.

♤ Also, it may be difficult for it to take into account local language, laws, practices and customs, which vary across States.

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