The Case Clearance Rate (CCR) calculated on the basis of number of cases disposed in a year compared to the number of cases filed in that year, has been impressive for the Madras High Court and the trial courts in the State, even during 2020 and 2021 when regular physical functioning of the courts was affected due to COVID-19-induced lockdowns.
The speed with which the State judiciary took to virtual courts was diametrically opposite to what happened in the physical court on March 25, 2015, when a mobile phone used by a litigant’s son to record the court proceedings was seized and destroyed after handing over the SIM card and battery to him, since experts reported that data could be retrieved even after deletion. A lawyer had caught the person red-handed that day and the court opined that recording of court proceedings without permission would amount to serious interference in the administration of justice. Since the youngster claimed that he only wanted to show the video to his father at home, the court let him off without any punishment but destroyed the mobile phone with his consent.
Video cameras were antithetical to court proceedings in the High Court until November 2015 when Justice V. Ramasubramanian (now a Supreme Court judge), during his stint as the administrative judge of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, had asked Justice S. Vaidyanathan to hear an urgent case, during a week-long Deepavali vacation, over free video call software Skype.
Thereafter, in December 2015, a Division Bench of Justices Ramasubramanian and N. Kirubakaran (since retired) used Skype to hear a case related to 89 inmates of an unauthorised shelter home run by Mose Ministries in Tiruchi. These innovative adaptations led to the creation of exclusive video conferencing facilities to hear cases between the principal seat of the High Court in Chennai and its Madurai Bench.
And when COVID-19 struck, the High Court took no time to adapt technology and shift gears towards the virtual mode. After experimenting with multiple virtual platforms such as Zoom and CISCO for some time, the High Court’s computer committee led by Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, now a senior judge of Calcutta High Court, finally settled down with Microsoft Teams and obtained necessary licences.
The result was that the Madras High Court recorded an impressive CCR of 93.07% and 98.12% in 2020 and 2021 respectively even as the corresponding figures for all High Courts in the country put together was only 76.75% and 83.70% for those years. Similarly, the trial courts in the State recorded a CCR of 85.02% and 95.18% as against 62.60% and 81.12% in 2020 and 2021 by all district courts in the country.
Hailing the achievement, S. Prabakaran, vice-chairman, Bar Council of India, said, the CCR of the High Court and district courts must go beyond 120% every year given the huge backlog of 5.74 lakh cases in the High Court and 14.06 lakh cases in the district courts to be cleared. And for that to happen, it is extremely important to increase the strength of judges and fill vacancies on time.
“Recently, the office bearers of Bar Council of Tamil Nadu met Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju along with Member of Parliament P. Wilson in New Delhi and insisted on expediting the process of appointments as 11 High Court judges are due to retire from their service in the next 11 months. Once we get enough strength, the CCR would definitely reach higher levels and help in clearing the backlog too,” he hoped.
