Can't put more burden on my brother judges: Bombay HC chief justice on increasing workload

The Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court on Friday spoke about the increasing workload of the judges while hearing a plea for monitoring the pending criminal cases against MPs and MLAs.

The Bombay High Court has expressed its concern over the falling number of judges in the court. The Bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice SK Shinde was hearing a suo motu PIL for monitoring the pending criminal cases against the Member of Parliament and Member of Legislature Assembly when they expressed this concern.During the hearing, Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni handed over a list of cases pending against the legislators. He pointed out that the list also included appeals against convictions which need not require urgent intervention.The Court granted a week’s time to the Registrar to remove those cases and only include the cases where there was stay on the trials. Meanwhile, Kumbhakoni requested the Bench to list the matters on which a stay had been granted before the appropriate benches of the High Court.However, Chief Justice Datta was reluctant to list those matters. “Where are the judges? Every month, every 15 days, we are losing one of our colleagues. The review meetings ask the judges to sit on Saturday. They are already overburdened, they have to sit till 7-8 pm every day, on Saturdays. I cannot put more burden on my brother judges. Hopefully, if something happens within the fortnight, then we will look into this issue. Till then nothing can be done,” Chief Justice Datta said.Following a Supreme court directive to all high courts in the country, Chief Justice Datta constituted a special bench which included him and Justice Shinde. This was to see if the trials against Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assembly could be expedited.According to data available with India Today, there are approximately 550 criminal cases pending in trial courts and benches of high courts across the states of Maharashtra and Goa.

The court will now hear the case further on April 8.

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