Five crore Indians wait when the courts take a break
The Indian judiciary's practice of shutting down for mass summer vacations exacerbates a massive backlog of over 5.39 crore pending cases. The article argues that while judges are overworked, the colonial-era tradition of collective leave should be replaced with a staggered roster system to ensure continuous court operations.
Why it matters
The current judicial system leaves millions of undertrials in prison indefinitely and creates a backlog that could take centuries to clear, highlighting a critical failure in access to justice for the poor.
The Supreme Court of India and the major High Courts are on a summer holiday break, i.e., shut down with some vacation Benches functioning to hear urgent matters. However, shops, markets, eating places, government and private offices, hospitals and police stations do not cease to work even though their staff enjoy personal leave. On the other hand, somewhere in an Indian jail tonight, a man who has been convicted of nothing is finishing another year behind bars, his trial still ongoing and perhaps years away from ending. He is one of the roughly three in four prisoners in this country who are undertrials: unconvicted, presumed innocent, yet serving time anyway — often longer than the sentence they would have received had they pleaded guilty. And as you read this, the courts, the public institutions that hold the fate of the poor in their hands, are functioning at only a fraction of their strength.
The article presents a systemic critique of institutional inefficiency and colonial-era practices while acknowledging the heavy workload of judges, maintaining a balanced perspective on the need for reform.
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