By IANS,
Chandigarh : A senior apex court judge Saturday called for adequate training of law officers to make the judicial process speedy and enhance the performance of judges.
“There is a definite requirement for the enhancement of judicial skills of our judges, which can be effectively done through judicial academies,” Justice S.B. Sinha said.
“Our judges have to deal with very complex cases involving international terrorism, cyber crime and white-collar crime, so they need proper training to do justice to their job,” he said.
“We also need to save the loss of judicial time by better equipping our judges through continuous judicial educational programmes in the academies. The time spent in the judicial academy is the time well spent and it would overhaul the whole system,” he added.
Sinha was here to attend the inauguration of the Chandigarh Judicial Academy, for Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, by Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan.
Noting that from 1978 to 2008, there had been a 12-fold increase in the number of cases and number of judges had increased from 2,500 to 16,000 in that period, he said if this continued at the same rate, then by 2030 the number of cases would reach 24 crore (240 million) and there would be a requirement of 85,000 judicial officers.
“So we need to improve the delivery system of our judiciary,” Sinha said.
On the backlog of cases, he said: “Presently there are 2.94 crore (29.4 million) cases lying pending in the courts. Out of these pending cases, 71 percent are criminal cases and out of these, 62 percent are petty criminal cases, involving poor people of the society.”
In Delhi, out of several lakhs (hundred thousands) of pending criminal cases, five lakh (500,000) are under the section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, he said.