Improve access to justice

India is a country where approx. 3.3 crore cases are pending in court
so according to a famous quote by the former prime minister of
England William Edward Gladstone, Justice delayed is Justice denied.
So as to improve access to justice India should reduce the backlog
created in the years. There are various ways for speeding up the
judicial machinery like increasing number of courts, increasing
number of judges as there must at least 50 to 1million according to
law commission report 1987 but is 10 to 1 million approx. But if we
target the major chunk of the pending case i.e. cases pending in
Subordinate court/lower court which are 2.84 crores almost 86 per
cent of the pending case. So pending cases in lower court must be
reduced.
In this process law pursuing students, 3rd to 5th year can assist the
judiciary and people approaching the court for justice. As the students
have a good understanding of laws such as IPC, Constitutional Law,
CrPC, CPC, Tort law, Contract law etc. thus they have a basic
understanding of law and can act as a legal advisor for the people and
the society at large. These students have also done their internship in
various courts, law firms and under various lawyers and have good
understanding and experience. These students can also be a helping
hand in cases which are older.
This will be advantageous for students also as they will be getting
more structured work experience and as, in Law, as a career
experience is one of the key factors for a good lawyer and judge. It
will improve their CV in the experience field and will certainly result
into better quality of judges and lawyer which will affect the whole
judiciary at large and can fill up the vacant seats for judges.
Moreover, the government is the largest litigant in India responsible
for nearly half of the pending cases. Many of the government
litigations are actually cases of one department of the government
suing another, leaving decision-making to the courts. Also, it most of
the other cases, when the government files a case, it is seen that the
government side fails to prove the point. For decreasing this backlog
National Litigation Policy(NLP) was launched in 2010 to transform
the government into a responsible and efficient litigant. But NLP
failed as an initiative due to ambiguity now there is a revision of NLP
going on. Here the work of students comes as they can assist the
government departments, which are suing the other, by enumerating
role of different functionaries and a periodic impact assessment, fair
accountability and minimum standards for pursuing litigation must be
listed out and students can spread these and can also assist
government department in their respective cases.
This proposal is made after considering factors like:-
 Good number of law universities/colleges and students.
 Demand for more courts, though there is a large number of
vacant seats in present the courts.
 The major chunk of the pending cases are pending in
subordinate court.
 Government is the largest litigant and many departments
failed to prove their point.
 Ongoing revision in the National Litigation Policy.
 As the 3rd years and 4th years have good knowledge of the law
and have done an internship under NGO, advocates, law firm
and different courts.
 And as these students are in the wane of their studies they
usually look for maintaining a good CV and getting as much
experience as they can get.

So a law college/university can make a portal on their official website

or directly inform students regarding internship for reducing the
backlog of cases in India. Universities can select a group of students
and assign them certain government department or can provide legal
aid to the litigants as Pro Bono Publico. The same methodology was
also followed in Kosovo as there was the backlog of cases and about
80 legal interns have been working on a UNMIK(UN Mission in
Kosovo)-supported project to address the problem faced by the
judiciary in Kosovo and the result was a 15 per cent decrease in the
overall backlog in just a few months. The project benefitted both
the court, by increasing its efficiency, and the interns, by allowing
them to enhance their professional skills. So if the same can be
implemented in India it can surely improve access to justice.