4 lakh cases pending in Noida district court, 25% due to lack of lawyers
Noida/Ghaziabad: UP courts continue to claim the highest share of pending cases in the national basket. Data shared by National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) on Wednesday shows that of the 4.9 crore cases pending across Indian courts, 1.2 crore alone are in UP.The Gautam Budh Nagar district court has 4.1 lakh pending cases.
Of these, the majority, 3.8 lakh, are criminal cases. Ghaziabad has 3.3 lakh pending cases, the data shows.Overall, 80% of the cases pending at several courts in UP are criminal suits.According to NJDG data, the unavailability of lawyers in the two NCR cities was one of the top reasons why cases dragged on in the district courts. Others top reasons were attributed to a variety of reasons like the suspects still on the run or not enough witnesses.Data showed of the 4 lakh cases pending in GB Nagar district court, around one lakh could not be decided due to the non-availability of counsels, while of 3.3 lakh cases pending in the Ghaziabad court, nearly 90,000 cannot be decided for the same reason.There are nearly 2,200 advocates in Gautam Budh Nagar, and 2,500 in Ghaziabad, data shared by the bar associations showed.Secretary of the GB Nagar Bar Association Ajit Nagar, however, told TOI that it was not the counsels, but the judges who are not available. He also blamed inadequate judicial infrastructure in the districts for the large-scale pendency."It is the shortage of judges, magistrates and readers that delays the disposal of cases. There are 28 courtrooms in GB Nagar district court, but only 25 judges," Nagar said, adding a proposal was in the works to increase the number of courtrooms to 86.Advocate Vipul Panwar, a member of the Ghaziabad District Legal Services Authority, told TOI that there were instances when bailable warrants were not disposed of for several weeks due to the unavailability of judges.Director of Rights and Risk Analysis Group, Suhas Chakma, a petitioner in Supreme Court seeking decongestion of prisons and humane treatment of inmates, said the judicial infrastructure was largely inadequate not just in UP, but across the country."There is some relief in Delhi after the number of district courts was increased, but it is yet to be seen in other states, including the NCR region," he said.Chakma pointed out that every year, new laws are introduced, widening the scope for the registration of new cases, but there is no commensurate increase in the scope of the judiciary. "No govt wants to spend on the judiciary, and with the advent of e-commerce and the virtual world, the nature and quantity of crime have almost doubled, which has to be dealt with by the same old judicial infrastructure," he said. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on July 1, 2024. The new law, along with the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), was enacted to modernise the criminal justice system. After the laws were replaced, senior advocates had told TOI that the Indian Penal Code was second nature to their legal acumen and amending some obsolete laws and revising sections in the IPC and CrPC would have been an easier transition than coming up with a whole new set of criminal laws.
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