Editorial
Judiciary smarting under pending cases
ICT holds key to reducing number
We have it on the authority of no less a person than Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain that the massive backlog of cases in all courts and tribunals including the Supreme Court stands at more than 21 lakh.
In other words, dispensation of justice is far outpaced by the inflow and piling up of all kinds of court cases, civil, criminal and appeal-related. This is tantamount to justice delayed being justice denied. In physical terms, this means jails full of under trial prisoners, poor conviction rates and reduced access to justice for the poor, women, children and other vulnerable segments of the people.
Speedy and quality dispensation of justice has as much to do with case management and court administration as with synergies between the Bar and the Bench working towards delivering justice.
Automation can be enormously helpful in the area of case management and court administration including case list preparation, transcription of orders and judgments and their publication on the internet.
Materially, ICT has the potential of making the justice delivery system affordable, accessible, cost-effective, transparent and accountable.
It sounds like a panacea for all ills. The possibilities are tremendous but realising them requires removal of certain impediments: the first one is lack of IT infrastructure and skilled manpower; secondly, habitual indifference, if not an outright reluctance to accepting change in professional culture adapting to IT technology; and thirdly, is the tendency towards repeated date re-fixations which are inherent in our case handling culture.
Above all, there is the question of financing development of IT infrastructure across the whole spectrum of the judiciary.
Mere maintenance of websites, that too constantly requiring updates, cannot take the judiciary too far. What is needed is addressing the problem areas and seriously imbibing automation. Those at the receiving end of the benefit would also have to be familiarised with IT to maximise the benefit out of the system.
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