Logjam in courts

More than 30 lakh cases are pending with different courts of the country with only around 1,200 judges to take care of them, triggering concerns that the litigants' wait for justice may only get longer.

Worried over the ever-mounting backlog of cases, the Law Commission (LC) has recommended appointment of at least 200 new judges every year.

In a letter to Finance Minister AMA Muhith on June 16, LC Chairman Justice ABM Khairul Haque sought allocation in the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year for appointment of new judges on permanent and contractual basis for the lower courts.

The situation might get only worse if new judges weren't recruited without delay for the sake of public interest, he said in the letter.

The Law Commission can only make 

recommendations. The recruitments are done by Bangladesh Judicial Service Commission which, according to sources, has employed 930 assistant judges and judicial magistrates since it was reconstituted in 2007.

According to Supreme Court sources, the total number of cases pending with different courts was 30,07,860 till December 31 last year.

Of these, 26,31,476 were with the lower courts; 3,61,038 with the High Court and 15,346 with the Appellate Division.

However, the number of judges for dealing with such a whopping number of cases is scarily low.

The Appellate Division at the moment has only seven judges and the HC has 97 while around 1,100 judges are actively serving at the lower courts, Registrar General Syed Aminul Islam of the Supreme Court told The Daily Star last night.

There are over 1,600 posts for lower court judges now and 399 of these are vacant. Besides, around 100 judicial officials, who are actually judges, are working for different ministries and departments of the government on deputation, he said.

Of the vacant posts, 263 are for senior assistant judges, 89 for joint district judges, 30 for additional district judges and 17 for district judges.

The situation is likely to get worse as another 193 posts for lower court judges will fall vacant in the next few months, according to sources in the law ministry and the SC.

Under these circumstances, the government is soon going to recruit 60 assistant judges and judicial magistrates for the lower courts, sources said.

The posts of other judges are filled through promotions, and therefore, it's not possible to fill those right away, they said.

However, LC Chairman Justice Khairul Haque, a former chief justice, also suggested in his letter that "competent, honest and qualified officials" from the retired judges can be recruited in the vacant senior positions as an "interim solution" to the case logjam.

In the SC, four posts of Appellate Division judges lie vacant at the moment.

Law Minister Anisul Huq, who is currently abroad, had told this correspondent in April that some new judges from the HC Division of the Supreme Court would be appointed to the Appellate Division any time soon.

As for the HC, there's no definite number of judges. The president can appoint any number of judges based on the recommendations by the chief justice.

The law commission chief, in his letter, also requested for allocation in the budget for construction of a building of the commission's own.

The LC offices are housed in only seven rooms on three floors of the Judicial Administrative Training Institute on College Road in Dhaka, which makes the commission's operations difficult, Justice Khairul Haque wrote.

"The Law Commission is a nationally important institution; it needs an address and an establishment of its own," an LC press release quoted him as saying.