India. Judging the government (South Asia Monitor)

Given how the judiciary is always held responsible for the huge delays in courts, it is not surprising that Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur should have got as emotional as he did at the joint conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and law minister DV Sadananda Gowda. As he pointed out, while the Law Commission had, way back in 1987, recommended that India have 50 judges per million people, we have a mere 15 today—that’s a shortage of nearly 45,000 judges or two-and-a-half times the number of judges India has at the moment. The current government, however, is not solely to blame for this since the 170 recommendations for fresh appointments that the CJI said were stuck at its level don’t even scratch the surface, vital as it is that they be cleared at the earliest. There is also the issue of the role of the executive in appointments that needs to be discussed since, after the Second and Third Judges cases in the 1990s, this role has been reduced dramatically—sadly, the Supreme Court struck down the National Judicial Appointment Commission which sought to redress the imbalance which had shifted entirely in favour of the judiciary.

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php?type=govd&nid=16567