The Indian justice system is one of the most important pillars of the Indian democracy. But for all its power, it remains erratic, under-staffed and above all slow. The result – prominent cases such as the 1984 Sikh riots still await a final decision with many of the accused and those seeking justicehaving diedin the long 32-year wait. The direness of the situation can be gauged from that particularly embarrassing episode last year when ex-Chief Justice T.S. Thakur broke down in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pleading for more resources to deal with theoverwhelming resource crunch. That old saying, justice delayed is justice denied, sadly holds true for India.

The Indian Judicial System follows a three-tier system – the lower courts, the state High Courts and the Supreme Court, India’s highest constitutional court. All three systems, currently face many challenges.

Why Do Courts Take So Long To Deliver Justice?

Securing justice is riddled with difficulties from the very start for the ordinary Indian. The procedural difficulties one faces in getting their case heard is a big contributor to the chaos in the system. From getting an FIR registeredto going to a lower court which takes its own time to decide cases and maybe even the High Court or Supreme Court in case of dissatisfaction, means a case can take years to decide. Add to this the huge number of vacancies existing in the Courts, and the situation gets truly distressing.

According to official figures, there are more than 27 millionlegal cases pendingin various courts in India, 6 million of which have been stuck in courts for 5 years or more. To manage this caseload, India has only 16,000 courtrooms and barely enough judges to preside over and carry out hearings. The Supreme Court is currently short of five judges with two due to retire in March 2017. 24 High Courts currently have 464 vacant posts for judges. In subordinate courts, this number is as high as 4,166. There is one judge for every 73,000 people in India, seven times worse than the United States.“If the nation’s judges attacked their backlog nonstop—with no breaks for eating or sleeping—and closed 100 cases every hour, it would take more than 35 years to catch up,”Bloomberg Businessweek hadcalculated.

This, even when the Law Commission of India, had recommended a fivefold increase in the number of judges in Indian courts as far back as 1987. This gaping hole in the vacancies not only creates inordinate delays in getting justicebut has brought the entire system to the brink of collapse and repeatedly contributed to what can be rightfully called ‘miscarriage of justice’.

The lack of manpower in the lower judiciary, aka the sessions court, is particularly problematicsince a major chunk of pending cases is lying in the subordinate courts. While the wheels of judicial reform through the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act did spin in terms of a new system of recruitment of judges, it got stayed through a court order that is yet to take off again.

The deeper malaise,though, lies not just in the corruption in the system or the quality of workforcebut the amount of resources the government earmarks for spending on judiciary. For the 2016 budget, only 0.2% of the budget was dedicated to the law ministry – one ofthe lowest allocationsgiven to a law ministry in the world. In comparison to India, the United Kingdom allocates up to 1.4% of its budget and USA a whopping 4.3%.