Among the favorite questions in Compulsory Mathematics in the annual SLC exams are the ones dealing with the number of workers needed to build a house in a given number of days. The greater the number of workers, and smaller the house, the faster the construction. The same logic applies to the rate at which our judiciary clears the cases filed with it. The greater the number of judges, and fewer the cases, the faster the clearance rate. But jurisprudence is seldom as straightforward as high-school arithmetic. So despite the mounting pile of cases registered with the Supreme Court with every passing year, seldom has the apex court of the country been able to operate at full capacity. At one point in 2012/13, there were only five justices at the court, when the Interim Constitution provisions for up to 15. Though eight justices were appointed last year, four positions of permanent justices are still vacant. The Interim Constitution, aware of the increasing case-load of the court, even allows for the appointment of ad hoc judges should the number of permanent judges be inadequate. And yet the apex court remains perennially understaffed.The new Chief Justice, Kalyan Shrestha, is aware of the crippling effect of shortage of judges in the Supreme Court, which is perhaps why he has made their timely appointments a priority in his 10-month-long tenure. The numbers are uninspiring. There were 21,755 unresolved cases pending with the court at the end of 2014/15; five years ago, in 2011/12, there were only 10,422 such cases. In the last three years, less than 25 percent of all cases registered at Supreme Court have been settled. In comparison, both district and appellate courts settle well over 50 percent of their cases every year. One reason behind such fast settlements is that these courts, unlike the Supreme Court, have been given additional judges, as and when needed. (Another is that, as compared to the case-load of the Supreme Court, far fewer cases are registered individually at the 16 appellate and 75 district courts.) The dirty politicking in the Judicial Council that appoints apex court judges is largely to blame. The five-member council headed by Chief Justice remains incomplete as the Nepal Bar Association, the umbrella body of lawyers in the country, has failed to pick their nominee for the council. Apparently, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML are lobbying for different persons.
There are other problems, too. As the new Chief Justice has repeatedly hinted, the apex court can be made a lot more efficient by clearing procedural and legal hurdles. Hearings are repeatedly postponed and seldom do they start on time. Since there is no provision for one 'lead advocate', there is a trend of a long list of lawyers arguing both for and against a case. The Supreme Court has also been slow to make optimal use of information technology, something the appellate and district courts have adopted with gusto. Chief Justice Shrestha might not be able to tackle all these issues in his short stint before his forced retirement at 65. He will in fact have done well to leave behind a full-strength Supreme Court with competent judges.
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