A PRESENTATION ON

CAUSES OF DELAY IN CIVIL

LITIGATION IN BANGLADESH
 1. Introduction

2. Sources and types of delay in Bangladesh

3. Defects in procedural law

4. Non-procedural causes

5. The present scenario of the civil court in Bangladesh

OUTLINE 6. Impacts of delay in civil suits

7. Remedies to avoid such delays

8. Role of bar to reduce delay

9. Expert’s opinion

10. recommendation
INTRODUCTION “justice delayed is justice denied …”
 SOURCES OF DELAY IN BANGLADESH

“There are some civil cases which were filed during the Pakistani regime and are still under trial,”

-Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, Chief Justice of Bangladesh .

1. leakage of civil and criminal procedure codes allows the cases to be lengthy.

2. the lack of a sufficient number of judges and courts force a judge to deal with five to six thousand cases in a year

3. even after justice is delivered, it cannot been forced until the confrontational parties receive a written copy of the
judgment.

4. dissolution of a bench stops the procedure of the cases of that bench

 TYPES OF DELAYS IN CIVIL LITIGATION

The causes of delay in civil litigation in Bangladesh can be defined in two sectors-

Procedural Delay Non-procedural

Delay
 DEFECTS IN PROCEDURAL LAW THAT CAUSES DELAY

• Delays in service or process of summons

• Presentation of plaint without documents

• late-appearance of the Defendant

• Delay-in non-filing written statements in time

• Delay in the mistake in the Plaint

• Delay-in settlement of issue

• Delay-in of substitution

• Delay-in pronouncing Judgment

 DEFECTS IN PROCEDURAL LAW THAT CAUSES DELAY

• Delay-in Appellate Division

• Delay-in the provision of Remand:

• Delay-in drawing Decree

• Delay in allowing frequent adjournment

• Delay for dual jurisdiction of judges

And so on.
 CAUSES OF NON-PROCEDURAL DELAY

• Delay by way of dilatory tactics of the parties

• Corruption

• Delay due to defect in the Statutes

• Delay in the suit by or against the Government

• Delay due to Judges Unpunctuality

• Delay in Trial system

 CAUSES OF NON-PROCEDURAL DELAY

• Delay for Absence of specialized type of courts

• Delay for Lack of dutifulness of the presiding judge

• Delay for Lack of proper supervision

• Delay for Lack of sincerity on the part of lawyers

• Delay for no use of ADR

SCENARIO OF CASE BACKLOGS IN BANGLADESH

Pending cases are not only a great source of suffering to justice seekers, but are also a problem for courts since
they can increase workloads and take up space and resources.

The Supreme Court administration on 16th July 2020, sent a case statistic report to the media that includes all
backlog of cases in the country’s history till December 2019.

As per the report, Bangladesh has a total of 3,684,728 case backlogs in all types of courts across the country.
CASE BACKLOGS

512,685 case 489,068 cases 23,617 cases 3,172,043 case

•Supreme court •High Court Division •Appellate Division •Subordinate courts

and Tribunals
IMPACTS OF DELAY IN CIVIL SUITS

•Faith of the common people in judiciary loses

•Non-appearance of the witness
•Wrongdoer gets the chance to avoid litigation
•Remedies made available are of no use
•Memory of the witness and the Judge fades
•Mental and physical agony to the party to the suit
REMEDIES TO AVOID SUCH DELAYS

1. Number of courts to be set up in comparison to number of cases

2. Provision for maintaining timeframe for each chronological step
3. Timeframe fixed for concluding investigation and trial of criminal cases should be made
mandatory.
4. The practice of inspection of court by the presiding judge himself and also by the superior
courts has to be done at least once in a year.
5. Presiding judges irrespective of ranks are to be provided with Steno-typist
6. The entry in the court houses should be restricted
REMEDIES TO AVOID SUCH DELAYS

7. Law officers of the government are to be appointed on the basis of merit and length of service
8. There should be separate investigating police
9. There should be chemical examined laboratory in each district.
10. Specialized Courts are to be established up to the level of additional district
HOW BAR CAN HELP TO REDUCE DELAY

Improve Keep
Appoint enough
disclosure preliminary
judges
practices inquiries

Provide Repeal
Implement of
adequate legal mandatory
ADR
AID sentencing

Prioritize early Use of Divert minor

resolution technology changes
 EXPERT’S OPINION
The Advocate reasons for delays in our civil justice system are both
systemic and subjective. They may be identified as partly-controlled
litigation, pendency of cases having no consistency between number
of judges and cases, absence of specialised courts, laches in
procedural laws, lack of dutifulness of judges and lawyers, lack of
proper supervision, complexity in the service of summons, absence of
system for diversion of cases, no use of ADR etc. About 3.7 million
cases pending right now in Bangladesh which are left unsolved.

Adv. Shyamal Baran Ghosh,

Judge’s Court, Chittagong
RECOMMENDATION
GROUP-C

PRESENTED BY:

SAJIA TANJIM

TOUSIF SADMAN