Ranchi, May 8: The Bibek Debroy Committee has asked the state government to open a dialogue with the judiciary to improve and speed up the process of delivering justice and restore people’s faith in the law and order machinery.

Citing the example of Bihar, the committee, which submitted its report on the state’s development plan recently, said restoration of faith in law and order machinery is critical in conveying the message that change is imminent.

Other than Debroy, the committee comprises Lavees Bhandari and Vishal Singh.

Expressing concern over the huge backlog of cases in both Jharkhand High Court and lower courts, the committee asked the government to constitute an arrears panel for dispute resolution, particularly criminal cases.

The committee also detected a disturbing pattern of pendency of cases.

“In December 2007, 49,970 cases were pending in Jharkhand High Court, of which 28,302 were civil and 21,668 were criminal in nature. This figure increased to 55,000 subsequently. This ratio of civil to criminal cases needs some scrutiny, since these numbers are out of line with what tends to happen in other high courts,” the report said.

“In most high courts, around 70 per cent of cases tend to be civil in nature. Hence, there is a problem with criminal case backlog in Jharkhand High Court. During the same time in the lower courts of the state, 44,284 civil and 2,28,034 criminal cases were pending,” the committee said. It added that in other lower courts, around 70 per tend to be criminal cases. “While the higher number of criminal cases in Jharkhand’s lower courts is understandable, the ratio is again on the higher side,” the panel observed.

The committee suggested a detailed scrutiny of what has been happening, particularly in relation to criminal cases, through a dialogue with the judiciary.

The reason behind the backlog trend was attributed to people’s reluctance to invoke civil laws to resolve property disputes as they were time-consuming. “For example, if there was a dispute between a real estate developer and landowner or flat owner, people resorted to filing cases under the Negotiable Instrument (NI) Act and for faster remedy,” said a senior lawyer. In Ranchi alone, there were over 5,000 cases filed under NI Act.

Civil cases mostly relate to property disputes, service matters and tenant-landlord conflict.

“Criminal cases are not a luxury unlike civil cases. These are forced upon a person, who has to defend. These may relate to corruption, misuse of authority, dowry and other petty offences,” said Aparesh Kumar Singh, a high court lawyer.

In another advice, the committee recommended separation of powers between the forest department’s administrative and judicial functions.

“Since the forest department is often perceived as an agent of an alien state and an instrument of extortion and oppression, there should be separation of powers between the department’s administrative and judicial functions. The present system is against principles of natural jurisprudence,” the committee said.

The committee advocated setting up of nyaya panchayats and gram nyayalayas under the Gram Nyayalaya Act of 2008, in every intermediate-level panchayat.

At the moment, they only exist in seven blocks — Mandar and Bundu (Ranchi), Ramgarh, Jarmundi (Dumka), Madhupur (Deoghar), Baharagora (East Singhbhum) and Jhumri Tilaiya (Koderma).

It also proposed introduction of shift systems in courts and asked the government to explore setting up women’s courts.

Maintaining that the government should announce a clear deadline for enacting new laws to reform the state police, the committee asked it to focus on improving quality of prisoner reform by investing in new facilities.

Taking a cue from Punjab, Debroy asked the government to consider selling off old jail land and building new facilities outside cities. “Punjab has experimented with the idea of selling land in the possession of existing jails (Patiala and Jalandhar) and using these proceeds to construct new better quality jails (Nabha and Kapurthala). This is an idea worth exploring,” it has pointed out.

There are 26 jails in Jharkhand — three central, 19 district and four sub-jails. The total prison capacity is 11,186, but the present occupancy is a crowded 17,166.