New Delhi, August 16: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that huge vacancies in various high courts of the country was a matter of concern and asked the chief justices to fill up the posts without further delay.
Addressing the conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts here, Singh said, “Existing vacancies in high courts is still quite high in number and needs to be filled up…I appeal to the chief justices of high courts to initiate proposals for quickly filling up these posts.”
The Prime Minister also pointed that vacancies in subordinate court level comprised 20 to 25 per cent of the subordinate judicial posts.
“Almost 3,000 posts of judges in the country are vacant because of the delay in recruitment. All the posts at the subordinate level need to be filled up without any further loss of time,” he said.
Singh lamented that though the gram nyayalaya (village court) legislation was enacted in January this year, “it is yet to be enforced. “I would urge that the state governments initiate immediate action to operationalise Gram Nyayalaya Act in their states. Once the act is fully implemented, we will have 5,000 courts at the intermediate panchayat level,” he said.
The Prime Minister told the conference that the government has decided to set up 71 additional CBI courts in different states on the advice of Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan. He said the fast track courts should conduct trials faster than the ordinary courts.
Singh also said that it was a matter of concern that a large number of undertrials have been languishing in jails and have served more than their period of punishment. He said there has been pronouncements of high courts and the Supreme Court on this issue, but “still the number of undertrials in our jails continues to be very large.”
“I sincerely hope this conference will devote some time to discuss this issue,” he said.
–PTI