Appellate Division hamstrung by judge shortage

The Appellate Division has been facing a shortage of judges as five out of 11 have retired since 2013 but no new appointment has yet been made.

The government has no plan to immediately fill the vacant posts by promoting judges from the High Court, Law Minister Anisul Huq told The Daily Star on September 29. Pending cases at the Appellate Division are increasing day by day though.

The minister declined to speak further on the issue.

Earlier on June 26, Anisul Huq, however, said a few judges would be appointed to the Appellate Division in a few weeks and that his ministry would request the chief justice to recommend HC judges for promotion. 

The president appoints HC judges and promotes them to the Appellate Division following recommendations of the chief justice.

Contacted, SC Registrar General Syed Aminul Islam said he did not know if Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha had any plan to take steps for promoting judges to the Appellate Division to fill up the vacant posts.

The backlog of pending cases at the apex court, meanwhile, is increasing though the rate of case disposal has risen since a handful of judges are now left to handle too many cases and the filing of new cases has gone up as well.

According to SC reports, 15,545 cases were pending with the Appellate Division as of June 30 this year, up from 15,346 on December 31 last year.

The Appellate Division has disposed of 5,911 cases last year, 5,035 in 2013, 2,905 in 2012 and 1,359 in 2011, according to a report published in February this year.

The government appointed 10 new judges to the HC in February, increasing the number of its judges to 97, but the rate of its case disposal has declined. As many as 381,080 cases were pending with the HC as of June 30, according to an SC report published in September.

The last time the SC saw new appointments was in March 2013 when four judges were appointed to the Appellate Division from the HC.

The incumbent chief justice at his felicitation programme on January 18 this year insisted on doubling the number of judges at courts across the country.

The Supreme Court Bar Association has also been demanding appointment of judges to the vacant posts for quick disposal of the pending cases.

Had three or four judges been appointed to the Appellate Division, three separate benches could have been constituted to dispose of a large number of cases quickly, said SCBA President Khandker Mahbub Hossain.

In 2009, the then president raised the number of judges at the Appellate Division from seven to 11 prior to the disposal of some important cases linked with the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the fifth constitutional amendment, among others.