Case backlog keeps rising

Case backlogs have been building up at the High Court due to shortage of judges with no government move in sight for fresh appointment.

More than four lakh cases have been pending with the High Court which currently has only 90 judges. Of them, three are carrying out duties as judges of the International Crimes Tribunal to deal with war crimes cases.

Ten additional judges were appointed to the HC in February last year.

Following the appointment of six new judges in June 2012, the number of HC judges stood at 100 against around three lakh pending cases.

The number of judges dropped since then after some of them either retired or were promoted to the Appellate Division, insiders said.

Law Minister Anisul Huq refused to make any comment about the government's plan for any fresh appointment.

“We are looking into the matter. I won't say more than this right now,” he told The Daily Star on November 4.

Seeking anonymity, a law ministry official said the ministry had no plan to appoint new judges to the HC, as it was busy with monitoring the under-trial cases filed in connection with the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004 and those filed against BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.

An SC official said Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha more than a year ago had urged the government to take steps to appoint news judges for the Appellate and the High Court divisions of the Supreme Court.

Three HC judges were promoted to the Appellate Division in February this year, increasing the number of its judges to nine, he said, adding that the government was yet to take an initiative to fill the vacant posts.

The chief justice stressed the need for doubling the number of judges in courts across the country.

According to a latest SC study, 414,035 cases were pending with the HC as of September 30 after it settled only 8,449 cases from July 1 to September 30.

Earlier, the HC disposed of 37,753 cases from January 1 to December 31 last year and the number of pending cases stood at 394,225 then, said another SC study.

SC Registrar General Syed Aminul Islam recently told this correspondent that the rate of case disposal at the HC did not increase satisfactorily due to shortage of judges.

Besides, the number of new cases filed with the HC is more than the number of disposed of cases, he said.

Courts across the country disposed of 3.25 lakh cases from July 1 to September 30 this year, while 3.47 lakh cases were filed in the same period.

After the disposals, 31,39,275 cases were pending with courts across the country, including the Appellate and High Court divisions as of September 30, according to the SC study published last month.

The number of cases pending with the Appellate Division was 13,119 as of September 30.

The Appellate Division disposed of 2,368 cases and around 1,300 judges of the lower courts settled 314,334 cases between July 1 and September 30.