Hyderabad: Cutting holidays may help Supreme Court, High Courts, not lower courts

Hyderabad: The Economic Survey 2019 released on Thursday says that increasing the number of working days may improve productivity of the Supreme Court and some High Courts, but is unlikely to significantly impact lower courts.

The survey noted that it has often been pointed out that Indian courts close down for significant periods due to vacations. The length of these vacations varies a great deal from court to court, but appears to have a palpable impact on the number of working days.

The Supreme Court’s official calendar for 2019 suggests that the court will close for 49 days for summer vacations, 14 days for winter break, and a further 18 days for Holi, Diwali and Dasara. After accounting for weekends and public holidays, that leaves 190 working days for the Supreme Court.

In contrast, the average is 232 working days for High Courts and 244 days for subordinate courts and there is a great deal of variation between states, and many courts make up for vacations by working on Saturdays.

The survey noticed that the subordinate courts, which account for the bulk of pendency, seem to work almost as many days as government offices.

 Apart from suggesting an increase in the number of working days of the Supreme Court and High Courts, the Survey also suggested that a specialised service called Indian Courts and Tribunal Services (ICTS) be set up, which will focus on the administrative aspects of the legal system.

It was pointed out that most judicial reforms tend to focus only on the quality and quantity of judges, but a major problem lies with the quality of the administration of the court system, particularly backend functions and processes.

The Survey cited a recent report by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy wherein it was noted that 'For effective functioning, courts require competent administration to ensure that processes are followed, documents are submitted and stored, facilities are maintained and human resources are managed. Court administration must support the judges in performing their core judicial function efficiently.'

According to the Survey the major roles to be played by ICTS would be (i) provide administrative support functions needed by the judiciary (ii) identify process inefficiencies and advise the judiciary on legal reforms (iii) implement the process re-engineering.

The Survey noted that the ICTS is not a unique model. Similar court management services exist in other countries.

The Survey observed that there are significant productivity gains to be derived from better administration, increase in working days, and technology deployment (including likely future applications of Artificial Intelligence).

Maintaining that it was difficult to predict the exact improvement, the Survey stated that the purpose of this analysis is to show that the required efficiency gains for clearing the backlog are ambitious but achievable if combined with speeding up appointments.

The Survey stressed that given the social and economic importance of this issue it should be given top priority by policy-makers.