The lawyers of the Gujarat high court are all set to go on a strike if Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily doesn't pay attention to the issue of 35 per cent posts of judges lying vacant in the HC.
Due to various administrative reasons and probably due to political tension between the Centre and the state, new appointments have not been made in Gujarat for many years. The situation has now reached crisis proportions the backlog of cases is growing.
Anand Yagnik, a well-known lawyer practising at the Gujarat high court, says, "How can you tolerate such a situation where the system (of appointing judges to the high court) simply doesn't function for years together? I think there are three reasons behind it. Firstly, a Congress-led government is at the Centre and the state is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Maybe they are finding fault with the selection of judges. Secondly, the executive and the judiciary have different opinions about the selection of judges. They have apprehensions about some lawyers who have been selected to be appointed as judges or they don't find their merit strong enough to stand scrutiny."
Yagnik believes that the issue of appointment of judges is not just about the tension between the executive and the judiciary, but is also due to the 'collective apathy' in the judiciary and the executive about the Gujarat high court.
The lawyers practising in the Gujarat high court don't understand why the politics between Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the central government in New Delhi should delay new appointments.
However, the problem of vacancies in the position of judges in high courts plagues most states in India.
In January 2010, figures from the department of justice showed that 254 of 886 positions in high courts across India are vacant. The lack of judges to ensure speedy justice is a known issue but a solution has still not been found for it and that's frustrating for the states. If the lawyers in Ahmedabad finally decide to go on strike over the issue, they might set a trend for the rest of the country.
According to the government's estimate, approximately 3.1 crore cases are pending across India, but the governments are taking their own time to appoint new judges.
According to a report by experts, there are only 17,602 judges sanctioned against a recommended strength of 55,000 judges. In fact, Moily has told Parliament, ''That delay in filling up the vacancies of judges is one of the main reasons for the accumulation of pending cases in courts.''
According to a senior lawyer, many Congressmen at the state and central level think that the "BJP may try to push the senior lawyers ideologically inclined to them into the judiciary system. That apprehension also delays the appointment."
The function of appointing judges was turned over to the Chief Justice of India and the chief justice of the concerned high court by a 1993 judgement of the Supreme Court. It's also called the 'collegium system'. There is a debate about likely changes in this system due to some appointments that have became controversial.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also spoken on the issue but co-ordination between the judiciary and the executive is missing at the highest level.
Senior lawyer and activist Girish Patel says, "The process of appointment of judges is non-transparent. This is causing the delay."
Groupism among the judges is also delaying the process, says Patel.
Yagnik says that many times, when some lawyers are selected to fill up the judges' vacancies, a movement starts to counter it and some new names crop up.
Another issue delaying the appointment of judges is that the high court and the Supreme Court also disagree about the names under consideration for appointment.
"Due to this delay, Gujarat judges are losing out on seniority in the high court. After a decade or so, there will be hardly any judges in the apex court from the state," Yagnik says.
He concludes, "It's a collective failure on the part of the executive and the judiciary that has done injustice to the Gujarat high court. This must be corrected. In July, Gujarat-based lawyers are planning a strike to draw attention to the issue."
