The Pendency of cases and the role of Virtual Courts

Recently, the Vice President of India expressed concern over mounting pendency of cases from the Supreme Court to the lower courts.

According to National Judicial Data Grid, the number of pending cases in all the courts are as follows:
In Supreme Court around 60,450 cases are pending while in High court around 45,12,800 cases are pending and around 85% of the cases are pending for more than 1 year while in District and subordinate courts around 2,89,96000 cases are pending out of which 80% cases are pending for more than 1 year.
As far as number of Judges are concerned, the strength varies around 34 in Supreme court, 1079 sanctioned judges in High court out of which 396 seats are vacant while in district and subordinate courts the strength of the judges is around 22,677 out of which 6000 seats are vacant.
Due to the delay in the appointment process of judges, there is a delayed justice and even the Judge to population ratio has not increased upto desired level and as a result the cases get piled up creating a huge pendency in cases.
There have been efforts to reduce the pendency of judges by the government and various measures like improvement in infrastructure, In-service training and orientation program, etc has been taken but still there is a significant delay in the appointment of judges.

The pandemic situation has been a blessing with disguise and has posed a new opportunity to get the judiciary on par with the technology which may prove to be helpful in future especially for several reasons such as:
- Virtual courts might give the lawyers the accessibility to all the courts instead of being confined to a specific court and it might help in reducing the burden of piled cases.
- The litigants will get rid of various problems like travelling, the issue of physical documents, etc.
- Overcrowding of courts can be avoided
The supreme court has also passed an order under Article 142 of the Indian constitution mandating High courts and district courts to frame guidelines for virtual hearing due to which justice can be delivered on time.
Post covid-19, the use of Information and Communication technology (ICT) has increased by courts for hearing of cases.
There is a possibility that in future only important cases which require recorded evidence and constitutional cases will be heard via physical court rather than all the other cases will be heard by virtual courts.
The major problem lies with physical court is the frequent adjournments which can be avoided by the virtual courts.
Thus, the virtual courts can be more affordable as well as accessible for the people.

The major problem with the virtual court is the technological glitches as well as network issues which might disrupt the regular working of the courts.
The use of technology has created a digital divide in the legal profession as the older generation of lawyers might not be comfortable in using the gadgets as the younger generation.
The problem of public interest litigation (PIL) is a major challenge to the physical court as well as with the virtual court as in many cases PILs have become private interest litigations for personal, pecuniary and political interests.

Thus, lack of infrastructure as well as certain mindset problems in the judiciary poses a challenge for the swift working of the virtual courts.

There is a need for a hybrid model where the courts can identify the particular cases that can be solved via virtual court or physical court.
The identification of genuine litigants and the mechanism for identifying the flavourious PIL’s is the need of the hour.
The special courts have proved to be efficient in speedy disposal of cases and can be continued even in the form of virtual courts.
There is a need for technology enrichment and the technological glitches needs to be sorted out.
The judges population ratio needs to be increased.

There are various concerns for the virtual court as far as the mindset of the people is concerned but it can prove as the opportunity to reduce the pendency of cases as well providing speedy and affordable justice to the people.

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