77,000 judges needed to clear backlog: CJI

77,000 judges needed to clear backlog: CJI 22 Dec 2007, 0038 hrs IST,Swati Deshpande,TNN

MUMBAI: In May 2007, California's population was almost touching 38 million. In India, that's the number of cases pending in courts across the country. Providing this peculiar comparison was none other than the Chief Justice of India, K G Balakrishnan, who on Friday also noted that India has only 12,000 judges — 2,000 short of the sanctioned strength of 14,000. As a result, there are over 2.5 crore cases pending in the lower courts, 37 lakh in HCs and 46,000 in the SC. "We need one judge for 500 cases to clear the backlog — that would mean 77,664 judges. At best, however, the judges' strength can be pushed up a few thousand more. We need more courts and more budget for the judiciary," said the CJI after a foundation-stone laying ceremony at Uttan for the Maharashtra Judicial Academy and the Indian Mediation Centre and Training Institute-Mumbai. The Uttan site is on the outskirts of Mumbai, close to Gorai beach, and holds a bust of freedom fighter barrister Joseph Baptista, legal advisor to Lokmanya Tilak and Mumbai mayor in 1925-26. The CJI said every state should have a judicial academy and the one to come up in Maharashtra should be good since the state had "one of the best legal education and a very high judicial calibre." He stressed on the need for judges to be trained on "court -management" skills and noted that vacancies notwithstanding, many magistrates and lower court judges were found lacking in even basic judicial knowledge especially on criminal procedures. He said some judges don't even know how many cases are pending before them, but each judge "should know how long it would take him to dispose of the cases before him