The Bihar judiciary - around for a hundred years - is not people-friendly, has plunged from set standards and has a long way to go to regain lost glory, say Patna High Court lawyers.

The collective views emerged at a function on Monday called "Talk on 100 years of Bihar Judiciary".

The event was organised by the Indian Association of Lawyers, Bihar Chapter, at the Bihar State Bar Council Bhavan on the Patna High Court premises.

High court senior lawyer Yogesh Chandra Verma, a past president of the association, chaired the event. He said: "No doubt, the judiciary in Bihar has a glorious past. But it has lately been plagued by problems that need to be addressed urgently."

Listing the problems that need to be address, he said the judiciary in the state is beset with nepotism, corruption and a huge pile of pending cases, both in sub-ordinate courts and the high court.

"The democratisation of the judiciary has not happened yet in Bihar," he said.

Further, he said: "Corruption is rampant in the judiciary, especially in sub-ordinate courts where it is as high as 80%. In high court too, there is 10-20% corruption. Corruption plays a role even in the appointment of government lawyers in courts, as appointments are sometimes made keeping in mind political considerations."

This, the senior lawyer said, has eroded people's faith in the judiciary, as money power and caste considerations have come to play a role in deciding matters, particularly in granting bail.

Around 18 lakh cases are pending in the lower courts in the state and around 1.25 lakh cases in the Patna High Court.

"We need to evolve a mechanism for early disposal of the cases," Verma said.

He advocated raising the strength of Patna High Court judges, currently at 43, to ease the load of pending cases.

Verma also rued about the shortage of sub-ordinate judicial officers in the state and lack of infrastructure in the Patna High Court.

According to the Shetty Commission, there should be 50 sub-ordinate judicial officers for every 10 lakh population. Keeping this standard in mine, Bihar, with its 11 crore population, should have 5,000 judicial officers.

But the shortfall is huge. There are only 1,680 sanctioned posts of sub-ordinate judicial officers in the state.

To make matters worse, proper sitting arrangements elude lawyers in the high court, Verma said.

Even sub-ordinate judges have to hold court in the most unhygienic of places imaginable, he added.

A former president of the Jharkhand State Bar Council, Vibhuti Prasad Pandey, who is at present a senior lawyer in the Patna High Court, said that those in power are to be held responsible for corruption in the judiciary. He said the flaw lies not so much in the system but in the faulty implementation processes that continues to plague our system.