BANGALORE: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has favoured establishing circuit Benches of the Supreme Court in at least three other metropolitan cities and High Court Benches at appropriate places in States.

"How many people can afford to approach the Supreme Court situated in the capital city?" Mr. Chatterjee was delivering a speech on "Justice delivery system: issues and problems," on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava and 50th anniversary of the setting up of the Karnataka High Court here on Wednesday.

"I am a votary of setting up circuit Benches of our apex court..." But some sections systematically resist such proposals. The reason cited for opposing such pro-people reforms was that such Benches would affect the integrity and unitary character of the court and would lead to unsettled jurisdiction. For him, the reasons were unconvincing and seen from the angle of the magnitude of the problem of arrears, the advantage for the people would far outweigh the perceived difficulties, Mr. Chatterjee said.

Backlog of cases

The Speaker expressed grave concern over the lakhs of pending cases in High Courts and called for people-centric judicial reforms for a speedy and effective justice delivery system.

There were 34,24,518 cases pending as on June 30, 2005 in various High Courts.

The subordinate courts had a pendency of over 24 million cases.

On the positive side, the pendency of cases in the Supreme Court had come down from nearly one lakh in 1991 to about 34,000 in November 2005, he said.

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