vForeword

List of Tables

List of Figures

Table of Cases

Contents

Introduction

Harish Narasappa

Section One

RULE OF LAW PROJECT

1. Decoding Delay: Analysis of Court Data

Kishore Mandyam

Harish Narasappa

Ramya Sridhar Tirumalai

Kavya Murthy

2. Bringing the ‘E’ to Judicial Efficiency: Implementing the e-Courts System in India

Atul Kaushik

3. Reaping the Benefits of the e-Courts System

Kishore Mandyam

Section Two

Administering the Judicial System

4. A Case of Self-Selection: Judicial Accountability and Appointment of Judges

Raju Ramachandran

5. Accountability in Judicial Administration

Arun Sri Kumar

6. Karnataka High Court: People, Processes, Pendency

M.V. Sundararaman

Varuni Mohan

7. Budgeting for the Judiciary

Surya Prakash B.S.

8. International Experiences in Judicial Administration

Sandeep Suresh

9. Judicial Efficiency and Causes for Delay

Alok Prasanna Kumar

10. Evaluating Judicial Performance: A Comparative Perspective

Vasujith Ram

Section Three

Bar, Bench, and Beyond

11. Wielding the Gavel: View from the Other Side

Gautam Patel

12. Never a Restful Moment: A View from the Bar

Arun Kumar K.

13. Playing the Waiting Game: A Lawyer’s Day in Court

Anupama Hebbar

14. Behind the Bench: Perspectives of Court Clerks

Shiva Hatti

Section Four

Access to Justice

15. Access to Justice Survey: Introduction, Methodology, and Findings

Harish Narasappa

Kavya Murthy

Surya Prakash B.S.

Yashas C. Gowda

16. In the Temple of Justice: A Survey Experience

Ramya Sridhar Tirumalai

17. Paths to Justice: Impact of Access to Justice Surveys on Judicial Reform

Krithika Gururaj

18. Institutional Dimensions of ‘Access’ and ‘Justice’

Chandan Gowda

19. Indian Judiciary and Access to Justice: An Appraisal of Approaches

Aparna Chandra

20. Institutionalising Justice: Gram Nyayalayas and Consumer Courts

Ashwini Obulesh

Appendix

About the Editors and Authors

Index

Part One

Chapter 1

TABLE 1.

Criminal Writ Case Types in Nine High Courts

TABLE 2.

Comparison of Tax-related Case Types between the High Courts of Bombay and Jharkhand

Chapter 2

Table 1.

Events Leading to the e-Courts Project

Table 2.

Hardware and Software Deployment under the e-Courts Project

Table 3.

e-Courts Project: Litigants’ Charter

Part Two

Chapter 3

Table 1.

Current Status of Judge Strength in the High Court of Karnataka

Table 2.

Retiring Judges of the High Court of Karnataka

Table 3.

Pendency in the High Court of Karnataka

Chapter 4

78Table 1.

Summary of Funds Allocated, Released, and Utilised under 13th Finance Commission

Chapter 5

Table 1.

Reduction in Backlog of Cases

Chapter 6

Table 1.

Cases Pending in District and Subordinate Courts in NJDG Database

Table 2.

Time Taken by District and Subordinate Courts in DAKSH Database to Dispose of Cases

Table 3.

Average Number of Hearings Taken to Dispose of Cases

Table 4.

Time Taken to Dispose of Cases Sorted in Five-year Buckets

Table 5.

Average Time Taken to Dispose of Certain Case Types¹⁷

Table 6.

Average Time Taken to Dispose of Certain Types of Cases across High Courts

Part Four

Chapter 2

Table 1.

National Legal Need Surveys (Last 20 Years)

Table 2.

Comparison between Paths to Justice UK and Access to Justice India

Chapter 5

Table 1.

Central Government Scheme for Establishing and Funding Gram Nyayalayas

Table 2.

Number of Gram Nyayalayas Notified and Functional

Table 3.

Numbers of Cases Pending and Disposed of by Consumer Courts

Section One

Chapter 1

Figure 1.

DAKSH Data: High Courts

Figure 2.

DAKSH Data: Subordinate Courts

Figure 3.

Average Pendency

Figure 4.

Highest Pendency in Subordinate Courts

Figure 5.

Pendency in Five-year Brackets in High Courts

Figure 6.

Proportion of Civil and Criminal Cases in High Courts

Figure 7.

Workload at the High Court of Karnataka

Figure 8.

Average Pendency in the High Court of Karnataka

Figure 9.

Judges’ Workload

Figure 10.

Number of Hearings per Case in Subordinate Courts

Figure 11.

Frequency of Hearings in High Courts

Figure 12.

Frequency of Hearings in Subordinate Courts

Figure 13.

Frequency of Hearings per Case Category across 21 High Courts

Figure 14.

Pendency and Judges’ Workload

Chapter 2

Figure 1.

Plan for Implementation of e-Courts Project

Figure 2.

Home Page of NJDG with Details of Pending Cases

Figure 3.

State-wise Disposal of Cases

Figure 4.

District-wise Disposal of Cases in Bihar

Figure 5.

Court-wise Disposal of Cases

Section Two

Chapter 3

Figure 1.

Role of High Court Registry in Movement of Files

Figure 2.

Progress of Writ Petition No. 54017/18 of 2014

Figure 3.

Progress of Civil Miscellaneous Petition No. 228 of 2014

Chapter 4

Figure 1.

Expenditure towards Administration of Justice by the Karnataka Government

Figure 2.

Comparison of Budgetary Allocation amongst Social Sectors by States

Figure 3.

Expenditure on Judiciary as a Percentage of NSDP

Figure 4.

Expenditure on Judiciary (Per Capita)

Figure 5.

Expenditure on Judiciary (Per Case)

Chapter 6

Figure 1.

Representation of ‘Pendency’, ‘Delay’, and ‘Arrears’

Section Four

Chapter 1

Figure 1.

Socio-economic Profile of Survey Respondents

Figure 2.

Subject Matter of Civil Cases as Per Survey Respondents

Figure 3.

Share of Land/Property Cases in Total Civil Cases by Income Group

Figure 4.

Gender-wise Break-up of Civil Cases (Plaintiffs and Respondents)

Figure 5.

Religion Matrix of Civil Cases

145Figure 6.

Caste Matrix of Civil Cases

Figure 7.

Socio-economic Profile of Survey Respondents Who Were Accused in Criminal Cases

Figure 8.

Profile Matrix of Criminal Cases

Figure 9.

Previous Criminal Record of Accused

Figure 10.

Handcuffing of Accused during Proceedings

Figure 11.

Provider of Surety for Bail

Figure 12.

Reason for Not Availing Bail Where Due

Figure 13.

Time Spent in Jail by Those Who Were Granted Bail

Figure 14.

Reasons for Delay (in Survey Respondents’ Case)

Figure 15.

Survey Respondents’ Perception for Reasons for Delay in General

Figure 16.

Estimated Disposal Time at the Time of Filing Case

Figure 17.

Prior Experience with Courts in Civil Matters

Figure 18.

Prior Experience with Courts in Criminal Matters

Figure 19.

Cost Incurred and Earnings Lost for Court Hearing

Figure 20.

Cost Incurred for Court Hearing by Type of Case

Figure 21.

Costs Civil Litigants Expect to Incur Till the Case Is Decided: Income Level-wise

Figure 22.

Average Cost Per Day

Figure 23.

Expenses that Litigants Expect to Spend Till the Case Is Decided: Civil versus Criminal

Figure 24.

Distance Travelled to Court for Hearings

Figure 25.

Cost of Litigation

Figure 26.

Finding a Lawyer

Figure 27.

Use of Alternative Dispute Resolution Methods in Civil Cases

Figure 28.

Annual Income of Those Who Used Alternative Dispute Resolution Methods in Civil Cases

Chapter 5

Figure 1.

Jurisdiction of Gram Nyayalayas

A

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B

Bihar Legal Support Society v. Chief Justice of India, (1986) 4 SCC 767 » 194

C

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D

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G

Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, AIR 1967 SC 1643 » 53

H

H.C. Puttaswamy v. High Court of Karnataka, 1991 Supp (2) SCC 421 » 62

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I

Imtiyaz Ahmad v. State of U.P., (2012) 2 SCC 688 » , 73, 194

K

Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225 » 53, 194

L

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M

Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978) 1 SCC 248 » 194

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N

Natia Jiria v. State of Gujarat, 1984 SCC OnLine Guj 228:1984 Cri LJ 936 » 195

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P

People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, (2003) 4 SCC 399: (2003) 2 SCR 1136 » 194

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Pramatha Nath Mitter v. High Court of Calcutta, 1961 SCC OnLine Cal 134: AIR 1961 Cal 545 » 63

R

Rajbala v. State of Haryana, (2016) 2 SCC 445 » 194

S

Salduz v. Turkey, Application No. 36391 of 2002: 2008 ECHR 1542 » 195

Sankal Chand Himatlal Sheth v. Union of India, 1976 SCC OnLine Guj 48: (1976) 17 Guj LR 1017 » 73

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Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration, (1978) 4 SCC 494, AIR 1978 SC 1675 » 147

Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Assn. v. Union of India, (1993) 4 SCC 441 » 53, 62, 73

Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Assn. v. Union of India, 2015 SCC OnLine SC 964 » 62, 109

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Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, (2014) 1 SCC 1 » 53

Surya Prakash Khatri v. Madhu Trehan, 2001 SCC OnLine Del 590: 2001 Cri LJ 3476 » 108

U

Union of India v. Sankalchand Himatlal Sheth, (1977) 4 SCC 193 » 73

V

Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241 » 194