Can new court of appeal decongest apex courtIJ
By admitting a public interest litigation on the establishment of a National Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court has again opened the conversation on its own structural make-up in particular and the state of the judiciary in general. The debate is still in its infancy (though the idea itself has been around for a while), and there's no reason yet to either reject or endorse the suggestion. However, the idea of a NCA, one that will be the final arbiter of appeals against decisions made by trial courts and the High Courts, is definitely worth considering. What Chennai-based advocate V Vasanthakumar has suggested in his PIl is this: Carve out the NCA from the apex court, and set it up, through regional benches, in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. With the new court taking over the appeal cases, the Supreme Court can focus on those that require an interpretation of the Constitution.
Those who support the creation of the NCA argue that it will allow the apex court to focus on its primary function as a constitutional court. This view was supported by a five-judge Constitutional Bench that included former Chief Justice of India PN Bhagwati, in the Bihar legal Support Society. The Bench observed that, “The Supreme Court was never intended to be a regular court of appeal…” and opined that an NCA was “most desirable”. Currently, the apex court (like the rest of the judiciary) is over-burdened, with as many as 61,300 cases pending as of March 2015. Because the apex court is dealing with so many ‘mundane’ cases, including even bail petitions, it has little time to deliberate on issues of national importance such as euthanasia or the raising of a state-sanctioned militia.
Meanwhile, there is little evidence that the Supreme Court's intervention in the other cases results in any significant value addition. Arguably then an NCA will be equally well-equipped to perform the review functions of the Supreme Court. Another, consideration in favour of an NCA is that it will improve the citizen's access to judicial redress. Currently, those who stay away from the national capital find it difficult to take their case to the Supreme Court. Hence, the lion's share of cases before the Supreme Court is from north India, with Delhi, Uttarakhand and Punjab and Haryana, at 14 per cent, 9.8 per cent and seven percent respectively. The Southern States languish at the bottom of the list: Only 1.1 per cent of the apex court's caseload comes from Tamil Nadu; Kerala accounts for 2.5 per cent and Andhra Pradesh is at 2.8 per cent.
On the other side, those oppose the NCA, argue that the new court will dilute the primacy of the apex court. The Union Ministry of law and Justice, which had considered Advocate Vasanthakumar's proposal in 2014, had rejected it on the ground that an NCA would “completely change the constitution of the Supreme Court”. It had also said that the Supreme Court can only sit in Delhi. Indeed, many believe that the distance-access issue is a false argument: There are many High Courts all over the country to dispense justice, and the cases that come up to the Supreme Court are critical enough to merit long-distance travel. Critics also argue that the apex court's caseload issues can be resolved by improving the quality of justice dispensed at the lower courts.
