The piled-us cases in the higher and lower courts of the country must be disposed of quickly taking positive steps otherwise the cases will pile up even more and that will make disposal of cases even harder and the litigants will continue to suffer. There is also a relation between crimes in a society and its justice delivery system. Speedy disposal of cases will definitely help reduce crimes in that society. In Bangladesh various sorts of crimes perpetuate, because here justice delivery is slow.

According to a report of this newspaper yesterday, more than 34.53 lakh cases are currently pending in different courts across the country. Of these the number of criminal cases is the greater, 19,67,165, and the rest are civil cases. Even worrying is that a total of 5,48,014 cases have been pending for more than five years.

This backlog of cases is very unfortunate to say the least, because the common saying holds: justice delayed is justice denied. For clearing of these cases, it is first essential to identify why the cases are piling up. Among the most important causes, as this newspaper has pointed out in its report, are inadequate number of judges, insufficient infrastructure and population growth. Against these problems, solutions are simple enough: recruiting more judges and building more infrastructures.

But before all, the relevant authorities including the Supreme Court as well as the law ministry have to show seriousness about the matter in the first place. Experts in the field are right to point out that, in the greater interest of the litigants, special measures could be taken. One of these could be creation of special benches. The question of a judge’s skill, efficiency as well as professional ability is also very important in quick disposing of cases and that calls for appointing judges considering their merit, not other considerations.

It is a constitutional right of a litigant to get justice as soon as possible, but due to paucity of judges, both in the lower courts and higher courts, fulfillment of this right is continuously neglected.

At present, around 1,500 judges are working in the lower courts and around100 judges are working in the High Court. This means that one High Court judge can oversee 15 lower court judges. It is time now the Supreme Court rendered its obligation to assert its power over the lower court judges so that they can quickly dispose of cases getting piled up in their courts.