Indian court is 466 years behind schedule
The High Court in New Delhi is so behind in its work that it could take up to 466 years to clear the enormous backlog, the court's chief justice said in a report that illustrates the decrepitude of India's judicial system.
The Delhi High Court races through each case in an average of four minutes and 55 seconds but still has tens of thousands of cases pending, including upward of 600 that are more than 20 years old, according to the report.
The problems of the Delhi High Court, which hears civil, criminal, and constitutional cases, is more the standard than the exception in India. The country's creaky judicial system has long been plagued by corruption, inefficiency and lack of accountability, often making the rule of law unattainable for all but the wealthy and the well-connected.
The United Nations Development Program says some 20 million legal cases are pending in India.
"It's a completely collapsed system," said Prashant Bhushan, a well-known lawyer in New Delhi. "This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial system."
One reason for the delays is that there aren't enough sitting judges. India, a country of 1.1 billion people, has approximately 11 judges for every million people compared with roughly 110 per million in the US. India's Justice Ministry last year called for an increase of 50 judges per million people by 2013, but it was unclear how the government would pay for such a massive overhaul.
Agencies
(China Daily 02/14/2009 page11)
