Ranchi, Oct. 23: Jharkhand Judicial Academy (JAA) has come out with a white paper, perhaps for the first time in the country, taking stock of functioning of the judiciary in the state in the past five years.

The move, aimed at maintaining transparency by the judiciary, has been prompted by the success of the case management model, initiated by the Jharkhand High Court in October 2004.

The status report, as the academy would describe, is a post-mortem of the cases instituted and disposed of by various district courts in five years.

It provides details of the number of courtrooms, judicial officers, ministerial staff, budget expenses, hajat buildings and other facilities like air conditioner, phone, fax, mobile, video conferencing facilities, generator sets etc.

Besides, it gives the number of public prosecutors, government pleaders, and implementation of judicial warrants issued. It also includes details of the infrastructure of district bar like chamber of advocates, bar library, canteen and shops etc, besides the demographic and geographic information of each district.

The report also has details about training modules and programmes conducted by the academy, apart from the funds spent from public exchequer.

Justice M.Y. Eqbal, the chairman of the state legal services authority, said the base document would go a long way in giving direction to the planners and judicial administrators in evaluating and improving efficiency of the judicial system and inspire confidence of people in the judiciary.

Brainchild of Justice S.J. Mukhopadhya, the case management model adopted for expeditious disposal of cases include identification, classification and grouping of cases, computerisation of records, and above all, the constant monitoring. The bottomline was that the state exchequer did not have to spend additional funds to clear such huge number of cases.

Under the model, each of the subordinate courts was asked to clear the old cases “out of turn” without compromising on the set procedures. Every quarter, they were duty bound to send an “action taken report” on 10 oldest cases to the High Court.

If the lawyers wanted repeated adjournments, the courts were asked to direct the police to ensure the presence of the accused.

No wonder the average pending of cases in the state has come down to five years, from 20-30 years. A few cases, which are pending for a longer period, are there because the police had failed to ensure the presence of the accused. In some cases, the higher courts had imposed a stay.

So, the disposal rate has been the highest in 2005. The 89 fast-track courts disposed of around 35,000 cases, out of 53, 000 referred to them till January 31, 2006.

Around 90 munsif courts disposed over 20,000 civil cases in the last one year. These apart, various lok adalats in Jharkhand disposed of over 51,000 cases from 2002 to 2005.