CJI-designate lists his top priorities

CJI-designate Justice Surya Kant on Saturday said dealing with a huge backlog of over 5 crore cases across courts in the country and promoting “game changer” mediation as an alternative mode of dispute resolution will be his two top priorities as head of the judiciary.
On online trolling of judges and judgements, he said these things never perturbed him. Fair criticism is always acceptable, he said.
Justice Kant, who was appointed as the 53rd Chief Justice of India (CJI) on October 30 by President Droupadi Murmu, will take the oath of office on November 24 to succeed Justice B R Gavai.
In an informal chat with mediapersons at his official residence here, Justice Kant said, “My first and foremost challenge is arrears of cases. Today’s scoreboard shows that the Supreme Court arrears crossed 90,000. I am not going into how it happened, who is responsible… maybe listing (of cases) has gone up.”
He said he will also seek reports from high courts about the pendency of cases there and in trial courts across the country.
According to reports, more than 4.6 crore cases are pending across India’s courts. The CJI-designate underlined the importance of mediation as an effective alternative dispute resolution mechanism.
“Now the second issue is mediation. This is one of the easiest ways of dispute (re)solution and it can really be the game changer,” he said.