Improving Justice Delivery

The author suggests ways and means to expedite court proceedings

Government-Owned Institutional

Arbitration like courts but less

procedures: Like courts, we should

have government-owned institutional

arbitration. The advantage is that the

public will trust it more, cost will be economical,

and it will be speedy as the law of procedures is not

stringently exercised in arbitration. Secondly, the

Government can directly appoint arbitrators unlike

judges at the collegium. Thirdly, all commercial

matters should be arbitrated before the Government’s

institutional arbitration, except matters which

cannot be arbitrated, which can easily reduce the

courts’ burden by 30 percent or more. The other

advantage is that all arbitration matters have to be

decided in one year, and there is only one appeal

before the Supreme Court of India.

E-Copies in Courts: Why do we need physical copies

for parties, courts and lawyers? There were 21

parties, and for each party, one voluminous set of papers was to be

given, one for the court, further copies for lawyers and counsels.

This literally means that “Save Trees” remains only in letter and

not spirit. Therefore, all parties should be given scanned copies

and they can carry devices such as laptops, iPads etc. to court,

read and argue from that. Secondly, maintaining physical copies

in courts is so tedious, you have to keep the papers intact and

secured, sometimes papers are lost or stolen etc. or not traceable,

and further, you need huge space to keep all papers of all matters

of the court, then you have problems of white ants,

and for that, you need to have pest control. All this can

be saved in terms of space, costs, etc. Hence, e-copies

should be started using in courts.

1. E-summons etc.: Why do we need to serve physical

summons etc., when emails can do the job? You

need the staff to upload the same on the server

and email them to email ids of respective persons,

lawyers etc., instead of sending it physically at

additional costs. To add to it, there are delays in

physical delivery.

Daily Time-Based Hearings: All hearings on a day

should be of 20 minutes. You cannot keep arguing cases

for hours and hours when everything is mentioned in

the written submissions, case, reply, or rejoinders?

The lawyers cannot go on and on for hours and hours

unless it is a requirement which Judges think fit in

certain cases. In the US, there is a time limit of 20

minutes for each lawyer to argue his or her case. The

advantage is that Judges will be able to hear more cases a day. The Judges will also waste no time in hearing

the same arguments repeated by the lawyer again and

again. Since the same will be a new system in India, there

can be an option to increase by another 20 mins at the

discretion of the Judge. The bottom line is that if everything

is stated by a lawyer and client in his/her written case,

plaint, reply, application, affidavit etc. and the Judges have

read the same, then the lawyer should only argue on limited

points for highlighting anything and not waste the time of

Judges with things that have already been mentioned in

written submissions which the judges have read.

Full Case Scheduling from Day 1 to Final Day: There

should be a full case scheduling. The moment you file

a case, you should have the schedule from Day 1 to the

final day on the dates and duration of the case, so that

one can plan accordingly. We must remember one thing

that persons coming to court generally are working

or employed somewhere and have to leave aside their

work and routine schedule. The above will also give

confidence to the person filing the case as he will know

all details. Imagine you know the flight boarding time but

do not know when it will land. Our objective is to at least

predict a landing time for closure of case, which today is

not known. In fact, the quality of service motivates us to

work on a project which has estimated timelines.

2. E-hearings, Why go to Courts?: Conduct e-hearings

in cases where required. Traveling to the courts may be

convenient for some but inconvenient for many. Where it

is inconvenient, e-hearings, i.e., video conferencing, Skype

hearings etc., between courts and lawyers chambers can

be conducted which would save us use of court rooms,

administrative time, money, costs, inconvenience, and

unnecessary travel to courts. The courts can always call

parties for important days or on order day. In fact, courts

which are for petty matters should have online payment of

fines etc. and no special courts should be opened for that

purpose. More so, it will be convenient for the Judges also

for administering the same.

3. Don’t Courier Case Papers, When you can Send by

Email: All services of documents like applications, plaints,

complaints, replies, affidavits etc. can be electronically

served to the concerned person and/or their lawyers on

record. The hassle of wasting papers for each party including

traveling to places for concerned persons involved in case

could be avoided. The parties and their lawyers should

exchange email addresses and the e-registrar should be

marked a copy to keep records of the same with courts.

All of the above innovations are possible by digitization and

policy decision-making as a Make in India referendum and

shall only enhance the confidence of the general public in

our justice delivery system and avoid terming delays in court

cases as “Justice delayed is justice denied”.

Disclaimer

– The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and are purely informative in nature.