Justice delayed! Are courts involved in an infinite game?

Abstract

A game theoretic conjecture of the delayed judicial processes and mounting pendency of cases in the Indian courts. Indian judiciary is going through a massive crisis. According to the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), as of October 2018, about 30 million cases are pending in the various Indian courts. Of all the pending cases, about 7 million cases are more than 5 years old and 2.3 million cases are more than 10 years old. In July 2018, the former chief justice Dipak Misra, while delivering the inaugural address at the Conference on National Initiative to Reduce Pendency and Delay in Judicial System, urged the high courts to form think tanks with judges, lawyers and academicians to explore innovative models to reduce pendency of cases. He emphasized that pendency of cases for long time periods raises serious questions about the efficacy of the Indian judicial system and brings a lot of disrepute to the institution. He proposed a 15-point plan to tackle this problem. Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the new Chief Justice of India, has also expressed his plans to address this challenge. He is of the view that the pendency problem has the potential of making the judicial system itself irrelevant. Legal experts believe that the problem could worsen in the days to come. A lot have been suggested towards how to deal with this problem, right from increasing the judicial capacity to the usage of artificial intelligence in court management. Court automation systems, digitization and e-courts can help only to some extent. I think merely increasing the number of judges or courts will also not help much. We need to see the larger picture and do a slightly more in-depth analysis of the problem before we start suggesting remedies. Let us see how game theory can help in analysing this problem from a different angle. Read more at: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/justice-delayed-are-courts-involved-in-an-infinite-game/51819/1