Even as the Punjab and Haryana High Court is reeling under nearly 31 per cent vacancy, ranking second in India with the 21 vacant posts out of 68, five new judges have been administered oath on Thursday.
This High Court is next to the Allahabad High Court, in terms of vacancies, where over 60 posts are lying vacant out of sanctioned strength of 160.
As of now, the High Court has just 47 Judges against the sanctioned strength of 68. Out this, the High Court has working strength of 33 permanent judges out of the approved strength of 38, and 14 additional, including the five administered oath on Thursday by the Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul.
They are Justice Anita Chaudhary, Justice Mahavir Singh Chauhan, Justice Fateh Deep Singh, Justice Jaspal Singh, and Justice Surinder Gupta. The approved strength of additional judges is 30.
Only recently, three additional judges - Justice Paramjeet Singh, Justice Naresh Kumar Sanghi, and Justice Rameshwar Singh Malik - have been elevated to permanent judges.
Time and again, the legal experts and senior judges are blaming the huge vacancies in the judicial structure for the high number of pendency. In fact, the Centre has also admitted that one of the reasons for delay in justice is vacancies of judges in various courts, including the High Courts.
Across the High Courts of the country, more than 250 posts have been lying vacant out of the approved strength of 906, with nearly 31 per cent shortage. The former Union law Minister Ashwani Kumar had admitted that the country is facing a pendency of three crore cases. The law Ministry has been blaming the “continuous consultative process among constitutional authorities to select suitable candidates” for delay in appointments for being a “time-consuming” process. Till last year, more cases were filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court than disposed of the previous year, resulting in a pendency of more than two lakh civil and criminal cases.
The High Court’s annual report for 2012 indicated that 1.08 lakh cases were disposed of in the year, while 1.16 lakh new cases were instituted in the high court. Pendency was up by 7,454 cases in the high court, compared with the institution of cases.
Focusing on curtailing pendency, the Centre is working on the implementation of the Gram Nyayalaya Act, 2008, at every development block level, and block level where the judicial officers would settle and decide normal disputes between people for which the litigants will then not have to come to the district and the state capitals.