New Delhi: The pandemic has severely affected the justice delivery system in India, causing a sharp decline in the disposal of cases, a study mapping the performance of district courts during the pandemic shows.
In its latest report called ‘Data Speak: A look at the District Courts’ Performance’, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy says that the pandemic years of 2020-2021 saw a sharp 42.33 per cent fall in the disposal of cases.
The report was released on 22 November.
The study, which aims to understand the accessibility and efficiency of the district courts, reveals startling data about the case-filing trends during the pandemic, disposal of cases, courts’ priorities, decongestion of prisons, execution petitions, and justice for juveniles.
The report, compiled on the basis of raw data from the National Judicial Data Grid — a government platform under the e-Courts project — for the period between 2018 and 2021, also challenges the idea that India’s a global leader in virtual hearings.
For context, in November, the Law Ministry said that the Supreme Court had become a ‘global leader’ with about 52,000 hearings during the pandemic.
In its report, the think tank said that “virtual hearings, however, cannot be equated with progress”.
According to the report, district courts saw a sharp overall increase of 13.45 per cent in the pendency of cases between 31 December 2019 and 31 December 2020 — the year corresponding to the first wave of the Covid pandemic.
This was the highest pendency of cases since 2013 when the Supreme Court started publishing its monthly pendency data, the report says, adding that the data represents the “entire district judiciary” and conveys more than it masks.
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‘No longer uninterruptible’
The pandemic “severely challenged” the idea that the judiciary was an “uninterruptible’ institution, the report said, adding that it posed an “unprecedented” threat to the Indian judiciary, impeding access to courts, decreasing efficiency, and affecting the justice system.
“With multiple lockdowns, for the first time in its history, the courts were brought to a grinding halt”, the report reads.
Although there was already some infrastructure in place under the e-Courts project, the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020-21 forced India’s judiciary to temporarily shut down to adopt technological solutions.
Launched in 2005 by the Supreme Court, the e-Courts project aims at enabling courts to use technology to make justice, accessible and affordable.
Decrease in filing
The report also a significant 32 per cent decline in the number of court cases instituted.
According to the report, 3.15 crore cases were filed in 2020-21, compared to the about 4.6 crore cases filed in the pre-pandemic years of 2018-19.
In this regard, Uttarakhand courts were most affected by the pandemic, the study seems to suggest — the report says that filings dropped 31.5 per cent in 2020-21 as compared to 2018-19.
Courts in Delhi, Himachal, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab followed at 30.09 per cent, 26.53 per cent, 25.74 per cent, and 23.92 per cent.
However, the filing in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh “increased slightly”, the report says.
Bail applications & execution decrees
Throughout the pandemic, bail applications were prioritised among criminal cases across all zones —North Zone, Northeast Zone, East Zone, South Zone, and West Zone — the think tank said.
In absolute numbers, at 372 per cent, Uttarakhand recorded the highest increase in the disposal of bail applications.
On the other hand, courts in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana and Uttar Pradesh saw a decline in the number of bail disposals by 26 per cent, 0.3 per cent, and 3 per cent, respectively, the report said.
The report also noted a massive drop in execution degrees (that is, cases to get court orders/decrees enforced) because of a decline in disposal rates.
The district courts under the Punjab & Haryana High Court and Delhi High Court recorded the steepest fall, dropping 69.9 per cent and 60.45 per cent in comparison to the pre-pandemic levels, the report said.
Learn, adapt, and incorporate for the future
Although Covid-19 was an unprecedented event, the judiciary must learn from it, the report said, recommending a robust disaster management system should be developed.
The infrastructure of courts should be disaster-proof to ensure the safety of physical records, and virtual hearing systems need to be enhanced, it said.
“Best practices from within the court, as well as other jurisdictions, need to be looked into. Feedback from stakeholders like litigants and lawyers should be regularly taken into account.”, the think-tank noted in its report, reaffirming the need for “localised interventions”.
Akshat Jain is a student at the National Law University, Delhi, and an intern with ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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