Cutting across party lines, members in the Rajya Sabha on Friday expressed concern over rising number of cases pending in various courts of the country and asked the Government to spell out steps taken to address the issue.
Raising the issue during the Question Hour, BJP member Chandan Mitra said the Government had not mentioned the timeframe in which it was going to bring down the number of pending cases from the present three crore. Maintaining that the numbers were likely to rise to 15 crore in the next few years, he charged that the Government had not taken any concrete steps.
He said the Government is the biggest litigant and asked law Minister Kapil Sibal the measures taken to reduce the number of such cases. Mitra remarked that the long trials “only fattened the pockets of lawyers”.
Rajni Patil (Congress) and Ram Gopal Yadav (Samajwadi Party) also raised similar concerns. Patil said many elderly persons were harassed in cases of 498 A pertaining to dowry harassment. Yadav asked the Minister about the number of cases decided when then went into appeal from lower court to High Court and from High Court to Supreme Court.
In his reply, Sibal said pending court cases might rise five-fold to 15 crore in coming years and more use of information technology and infrastructure creation could help reduce it. He said 30-35 per cent pending cases could be easily resolved with use of IT.
Noting that the Gover nment was a litigant in many cases, he said of the three crore pending cases, 18 per cent relate to Negotiation of Instruments (NI) Act like cheque bounce, 10 per cent are regarding disputes on motor vehicle claims and five to seven per cent relate to Electricity Act.