Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud said on Sunday that a panel on reducing the arrears of cases has skillfully laid out an action plan for reducing case pendency through case management.

In his address at the National Conference of the District Judiciary, the chief justice said the committee comprises Justice AS Oka and Justices Vikram Nath and Dipankar Datta.

Elaborating on three stages of the action plan, he said, “One is the preparatory stage of forming district-level case management committee to identify target cases and undated cases and reconstruction of records. The second is to resolve cases pending before courts for 10-20, 30 years or more, and the third is that from January to June 2025 the judiciary will executive, and the third phase is meant for the clearance of the backlogs pending for over a decade in the courts,” he said.

Chandrachud said this effort requires an intricate coordination of various applications and data management systems to plan and track our strategies. Some of the other strategies for dealing with the backlog include pre-litigation dispute resolution, he said.

The CJI also emphasised the need for modernised facilities and practices in order to increase accessibility.

“We must, without any question, change the fact that only 6.7 per cent of our court infrastructure at the district level is female-friendly. Is this acceptable today in a nation where at the basic level of recruitment in some states, over 60 or 70 per cent of the recruits are women? Our focus areas are on increasing accessibility measures, which can be understood by carrying out infrastructural audits, opening in-court medical facilities, creches, and technological projects like e-seva Kendras and video conferencing devices. These endeavours aim to increase access to justice,” he said.

He called for a safe and accommodating environment for all sections of society and emphasised the need to confront the biases faced by vulnerable groups at the bar and the bench.

“Axiomatically, we must also ensure that our courts provide a safe and accommodating environment for all members of our society, particularly for groups such as women and other vulnerable groups such as persons with disability, members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and people across the socio-economic landscape.

With the increasing number of women coming to the judiciary, we must also confront the biases which we may unwittingly have towards our colleagues at the bar and the bench,” he said.

The chief justice of India further said that the Supreme Court recently concluded its first-ever National Lok Adalat, at which almost 1,000 cases were disposed of amicably within 5 working days.