The great Indian judicial system is nowadays, overburdened with the workload. There is continuous pressure on the Judges of the lower, higher and the apex judiciary to dispose of the cases in a speedy manner so that the justice in its appropriate way can be delivered to the people concerned. Following this, several commissions and councils have been formed. Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure is also applied every now and then in the cases where the alternative relief exists. For the proper administration of justice by these alternate forums, certain tribunals, commissions and committees have been established in our country. But still, the burden of cases has not been reduced in an expected manner. One of the main reasons which I see for this is that these tribunals, commissions, councils and committees have become the “Retiring Rest Room” of our Hon’ble retired judges of the Hon’ble High Courts and Supreme Court.  This year in the month of August Hon’ble Justice (Retd.) Adarsh Kumar Goel was appointed as the chairperson of the National Green Tribunal. We need to realize that there is no logic in delaying any appointment for the sake of one’s retirement. Many cases go pending during that certain period of time, which practically means that the purpose of forming such a tribunal is hence not served and as a result the common masses, we the people of India still roam around the same vicious cycle as we were in the time when these tribunals were not formed.

If we look at the appointments in NGT or even in the NHRC, we can easily find the retired judges sitting on the top posts.  This means that actually, we are not letting the younger generations to enter into such domains of alternate jurisdictions, which also means that the retired judges working post-retirement are already exhausted. How can a judge who says that he is already exhausted due to the burden of cases can work efficiently and do justice with any tribunal or commission? In fact, section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure is not applied in its purest sense in order to dispose of the cases through alternate judicial mechanisms. As an intern, I have worked on the cases involving the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. In most of the cases, the parties were not satisfied with the arbitral award and wished to move to the court through an OMP (Ordinary Miscellaneous Petition).  Also, a major drawback with the Act of 1996 is that the parties still have to approach the court for the purpose of enforcement of the awards. So, practically speaking as of now, we don’t have the clear-cut solution for the proper alternate judicial mechanism. Also, after the prolonged process of appointment of the members and chairperson of any tribunal, we come to know that the decision is not binding. In such a situation how long can we rely on alternative mechanisms? Another perspective to this can be that of Professor Freeman’s approach which basically says that anything under the sun is a subject to judicial review. But in recent days when we are facing a tough situation both in and out the judiciary, we need more such binding alternate jurisdictions to emancipate the traditional judicial models from the burden of cases. At the same time, we need to maintain the credibility of the court because if we lose the credibility, we lose the paramount space that the judiciary holds in our nation.

Hope that the justice is secured!