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Kathmandu Saturday November 02, 2002 Kartik 17, 2057.
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Court backlog fuels demand for reform
By Pramod Poudel
KATHMANDU, Nov 1 - Jurisdiction
of district courts should be well-demarcated and limited as the lower courts are already
burdened with all sorts of cases, district court officials said here today.
Talking to The Kathmandu Post
today, Achyut Prasad Bhandari, Under Secretary and Registrar at Kathmandu District Court,
expressed concern over the large number of back-logged cases and stressed that it is high
time authorities reformed the courts' old systems and procedures.
"The district courts are
looking after all sorts of cases," he said. "The pressure is enormous..."
For instance, in Kathmandu
District Court alone a total of 5,830 cases have been filed, out of which 715 were
registered during the current fiscal year while the remaining were back-logged cases. The
court so far has given verdict to 460 cases of the 715 cases registered till mid-October.
Altogether 11 Judges have been
deputed at the court. Officials at the court said that a judge returns verdict on about
350 cases a year.
Bhandari stressed that the
system of "lucky draw" to select Judges every time cases are pended should be
eliminated, and that a case being looked at by one Judge should not be passed on to
another unless deemed necessary.
The court officials also pointed
out that the Judges should specialise in particular cases and not on all sorts of cases.
"This is one of the reasons why the cases are lingered over," Bhandari said.
According to court officials,
the bulk of the budget allocated annually to the court is spent on employees' salaries,
while the rest is spent on stationary, newspapers and books (Rs 10,000) and so on.
Besides pointing out the need to
impart "timely legal education" to the legal professionals, they stressed on the
need to organize training and interactive seminars.
"We do not even have a
computer here," Bhandari said, lamenting the court's state of affairs. "In such
situation, how can one speed things up. Virtually every type of work, including record
keeping, is done here manually."
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