Shivaraj Huchhanavar

The release of a convict by the Allahabad HC last month after 48 years of entangled criminal proceedings represented a broader crisis - the inherent complexity of judicial proceedings in India, and the difficulty of any one actor, including our subordinate court judges, in dictating the time and pace of cases. Would introducing case administrators in our courts, similar to Canada, the US and UK, which would free up the workload of subordinate court judges, be the saving grace?

Persistent regulatory failures and continued inactions of the judicial leadership risk inviting heavy-handed and politically motivated reforms that could permanently compromise judicial autonomy under the guise of reform, writes Shivaraj Huchhanavar.

The Supreme Court’s decades-long intervention in the regulation of state judicial service lacks a clear constitutional foundation and undermines the federal judicial governance architecture that the Constitution deliberately envisages.

In recent years, various courts of India’s higher judiciary have together produced a confusing jurisprudence on the application of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, introducing elements not specified by the Act, resulting in its dilution.