Getting more judges is not the panacea of all evils: Supreme Court junks Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay plea to double number of judges

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to entertain a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by BJP leader and Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay seeking directions to double the number of judges in High Courts and district courts. .A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha took a poor view of such petitions, stating that they were turning the system dysfunctional."Every evil you see does not merit a PIL. Your panacea does not warrant a remedy. Try getting judges to fill up the existing vacancies and then you will realise how difficult it is," said the CJI. .The Court further remarked that these were all "populist measures", and explained the difficulty in just filling up existing vacancies in High Courts."It is difficult to get 160 judges; how will get 320 judges at Allahabad High Court? Getting more judges is not the panacea of all evils. We cannot entertain petitions which are general like this.".While Upadhyay argued that the petition was in public interest and not adversarial, the CJI refused to accept this submission. "This is like Parliament saying in an Act that all matters will be disposed of within 6 months. It does not happen like this," CJI Chandrachud added. .Further, the CJI opined that such PIL petitions deserved to be dismissed with costs. "We will make you pay infrastructural costs for making us hear your PILs. This is public time and we are not hearing genuine matters.".Justice Narasimha went on to explain that just by increasing judges, pendency would not go away.To this, the CJI added that there were problems regarding recruitment to subordinate courts which did not have such simplistic solutions."When I was in Allahabad High Court, Law Minister then had asked me to increase the judges to 25 per cent. I was like, Good Lord I cannot even fill the 160. Ask Bombay High Court Chief Justice how many young lawyers are looking to get elevated.. ask him," the CJI further elaborated. .In light of this exchange, Upadhyay agreed to withdraw the petition."Withdrawal allowed. Liberty granted to file a fresh plea if any with research on statistics on recruitment, vacancies etc," the Court recorded. .[Read our live-coverage of the hearing below].The plea was filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey. [Read order]

Getting more judges is not the panacea of all evils: Supreme Court junks Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay plea to double number of judges

Debayan Roy

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