Why Most Court Judgments in India Are Flawed. Representational Image of a Courtroom Created with Meta AI Image Generator.
Why Most Court Judgments in India Are Flawed
The excerpts from the “India Judicial Research Report 2024: Decline of the Indian Judiciary” are given below.
While the members of the judiciary are not quite qualified, the government is blindly increasing the number of courts and judges.
A large number of lawyers and judges are not comfortable in the use of English in courts. While most judges are not quite educated, there are numerous flaws in their written judgements as well as spoken pronouncements.
Similarly, most lawyers are so ignorant that they cannot write even a few sentences correctly in English language, which is commonly used in Indian courts. According to the Department of Justice, Government of India, Article 348(1) of the Constitution of India provides that “all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every high court shall be in English language until Parliament by law otherwise provides.”
But there is scarce use of proper English in courts. As India ranks 134 out of 193 countries and territories on the 2023/24 Human Development Index (HDI), the performance of workers in all the professional fields is bad. The same is visible in the judicial profession where judges as well as lawyers lack skills to work effectively and deliver proper justice to the citizens.
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The members of the Indian judiciary are not able to work properly because they do not understand English which propels the modern information-driven world. Therefore, they keep working as manual workers because of which litigants suffer as they cannot challenge wrong court decisions.
It is being observed that almost all the court judgements and other documents which are used as part of the judicial work in India are flawed. Some of the examples of these wrong judgements and incorrect use of language are included in the research report, “Risks of English Language Limitations in Indian Judiciary: Pitfalls and Solutions”. [ You can click here to download and read the full research report. ]
While the members of the judiciary are not quite qualified, the government is blindly increasing the number of courts and judges. The 2023 data shared in the Rajya Sabha by the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law & Justice, Government of India, reveals that in the 686 districts of India, there are 3,466 district court complexes which accommodate over 2 million advocates. In addition, 25 high courts and the Supreme Court are supposed to handle millions of court cases filed every year.
For the year 2023, for example, nearly 2.6 crore (26 million) new cases were instituted across various levels of courts. These include civil, criminal, and other types of cases at the Supreme Court, high courts, and subordinate courts. Since the number of judges in courts is pathetically low, they are not able to deliver proper justice to litigants.
Download: You can click here to download and read the India Judicial Research Report 2024 to support this editorial initiative.
