Mumbai: After turning an administrative report regarding staff shortage, in a contempt petition, into a suo motu petition last December, Bombay High Court on Friday sought action from the State and said merely appointing staff was insufficient to tackle the crisis – they need to be technically qualified to handle modern judicial requirements. The Bench directed the State to account not only for present staffing shortages but also for future requirements.
The registry indicated a deficit of 453 people on the Original Side and 792 people on the Appellate Side, making it a total of 1,245 personnel. A division bench of Justice Ajay Gadkari and Justice Chandak on Friday was factoring in the fact that the High Court would have a new futuristic complex in the future at Bandra East and that staff shortages, which cannot be countenanced now, would not be countenanced then.
Additional govt pleader Abhay Patki informed the bench that the state would be taking all possible steps to make appointments. Patki said that the govt would surely sanction the required staff once the proposal to that effect is submitted by the High Court to the state govt, after taking views of the General Administration Department and the Finance Department. He said the conditions for all such appointments would be subject to the proposal satisfying all norms and details of the class of posts in its financial outlay, etc. He also said the officials of the High Court registry should hold discussions with the officials from govt to sort out the matter as soon as possible. He assured that the proposals, as may be submitted, would be considered as soon as possible and that the State authorities would not create any obstructions.
In December 2024, while hearing a contempt plea, the High Court registry, when asked, stated in a report dated December 14, 2024, to indicate the additional staff requirement in each department both on the Original Side and the Appellate Side. The High Court had earlier observed that “invariably due to insufficient staff, the functioning of our Courts gets hampered. Illustratively, many times the files are not located or traced (as for want of racks and storage facilities – they are necessarily kept on the floor, moreover, there is no space on the floor too and difficult to segregate matters), the documents filed in the form of Affidavits/replies by parties to the Petition are not annexed timely, not bound and paginated correctly, as required for the record.”
The High Court noted that orders passed are often not stitched/attached to the file before the Division Benches and the order thereof is placed in one of the files and not in the other. Sorting and filtering of matters becomes difficult for the smooth functioning of courts. Consequently, it affects board preparation and even bringing matters to the court once it is prepared. Illustratively, if matters have several volumes, all of them are not brought to the court and consequently, the matters cannot be proceeded with or, if proceeded with, are burdened with additional copies of the same documents. Now, the courts claim to have gone digital, but not only are there fewer scanning and printing machines but also a shortage of manpower to do the work and therefore all the cases are not uploaded on the e-filing system of the court to make our court paperless. The already overburdened staff is required to do additional work, which elongates their work hours on a daily basis, the High Court observed.