A few months back, the President Droupadi Murmu while addressing a function, raised the issue of delayed justice. She said that delay in court decisions in heinous crimes, like rape, forces the common man to think that the judicial process lacks sensitivity, even as she called for a change in ‘culture of adjournments’ in the judiciary asserting longstanding pendency and backlog of cases is a big challenge before the judiciary. She also lamented that in some cases, people with resources continue to roam around fearlessly and freely even after committing crimes while as those who suffer from their crimes live in fear as if they have committed some crime, she said, adding, that is why that the poor from villages are afraid to go to court. The President had flagged a vital issue. The basic purpose of the legal system is to deliver justice without delay but here the judicial scene is otherwise. Hundreds of thousands of cases are just lingering on without any worthwhile reason and with it are suffering all those people who are simply waiting for the courts to pronounce verdicts.
No doubt people here have faith in the judicial system but at the same time the delay in delivery of justice is telling upon their trust in the judiciary. Knowing that the cases will linger on for years, most people accept injustices as their fate and don’t dare to approach the courts for seeking justice. There are umpteenth examples wherein people approached the courts for seeking justice and the cases dragged on with no verdict even as the complainants breathed their last. This delay is detrimental for the overall concept of the justice. Worst victims of this delay and pendency are the poor and downtrodden. Seeking of justice has become a dearer commodity and only those who have lots of money can afford to hire able lawyers to get immediate justice. Although the Legal Aid Services is in operation and many people are getting benefited, but overall performance of this service too is not by any standard satisfactory. Here also the delay in justice is telling upon the justice system and the delivery is as pathetic as in other cases.
A decade or so back the concept of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) was also introduced here and a few mediation centres were set up here and there. But this system suffers a basic and inherent lacuna. It seems to presume that the lawyers, who are trained in long-drawn legal battles, will nudge and push their clients towards out of the court settlements. This is not going to happen. As the common sense has it, lawyers see little incentive for them in ADR while as their economic well-being is directly linked to long drawn legal wrangles. So the concept has, if at all any, had only limited success. Indeed the system of ADR could work better if the courts themselves appoint trained mediators to broker truce between the disputing parties as happens elsewhere in the developed West where 70-80 percent cases are actually settled outside of courts with the help of court appointed mediators.