Calcutta HC CJ calls for performance audit of judicial sector

Calcutta High Court Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan has inaugurated a 'Justice Clock' to help people assess the performance of the judicial sector. The 'Justice Clock' will display the status of cases in subordinate courts of West Bengal.

Kolkata: Calcutta High Court Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan on Wednesday said there has to be a performance audit of the judicial sector to help people assess it.

Inaugurating a 'Justice Clock' at the high court, the chief justice said it will provide information on the pendency of cases, rate of disposal of cases, number of judges at a court, judge-litigation ratio rates, judge-lawyer ratio rates and also on the performance of the judicial sector.

The 'Justice Clock' will display the status of cases in subordinate courts of West Bengal.

"There has to be a performance audit. It's not the financial audit (only) that reflects the credibility of an institution, it is also the performance audit," Chief Justice Radhakrishnan said.

The utility the system is going to bring forward is in the best interest of the people who will get information on how the institutions of national relevance work, he said.

"The dissemination of information will go a long way to help the people to assess the judicial sector," he said.

Calcutta High Court Registrar General Rai Chatterjee said the 'Justice Clock' is an electronic board which will display the number of cases pending before each district and subordinate court in the state and the status of cases.

The board, installed at the 'E' Gate of the high court, will also show the ranking of the district and subordinate courts, based on their performance in disposing of cases.

It will, at present, not display information on litigations before the high court, she said.

There are at least 22.81 lakh cases pending before different courts in the state, of which 17.7 lakh are criminal cases, according to the National Judicial Data Grid.

Of the total pending cases in the state, including civil and criminal, 3,16,902 cases are pending before different courts for more than 10 years, as per the grid.

There are 2,28,161 cases pending before the Calcutta High Court as on November 30, according to data provided by its administration.

Of these, 1,70,039 are civil and 38,302 are criminal cases pending before the appellate side of the high court, while 19,820 are original side civil matters.

The high court has a sanctioned judge strength of 72, but has only 40 judges at present.

It has two circuit benches at Port Blair and Jalpaiguri.