Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud has urged for a national judicial recruiting process to address the mounting vacancies and case backlog in courts. Speaking at the National Conference of the District Judiciary’s valedictory ceremony, CJI Chandrachud emphasised the importance of standardising the judicial recruitment calendar across all states in order to address current vacancy rates of 28% for judicial personnel and 27% for non-judicial staff.
“The time has come to think of national integration by having a recruitment process for judicial services that crosses the narrow domestic walls of regionalism and state-centered selections,” CJI Chandrachud stated.
The Chief Justice emphasised the importance of filling vacancies and lowering case backlogs in boosting the court’s disposal-to-filing ratio, which is currently 71% below capacity. He also mentioned a team formed by Justices AS Oka, Vikram Nath, and Dipankar Datta that has created a three-part strategy to minimise arrears, with the third phase aiming at resolving decades-old cases by mid-2025.
President Droupadi Murmu, who had previously supported the concept of an All India Judicial Service, has emphasised the necessity of identifying and developing legal talent, similar to the IAS and IPS recruiting processes.
The CJI further emphasised the need for female-friendly court infrastructure, pointing out that just 6.7% of district court facilities serve women, despite high female recruitment rates in some states.