Acting Chief Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla says a small committee has already taken up the task of preparing a feasibility study and working procedures.
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Acting Chief Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla has said that preparations are underway to 'live stream' important cases to make the administration of justice more transparent and accountable. Acting Chief Justice Malla informed that a small committee has already started work to develop a feasibility study and working procedures for this on Friday to make the Constitutional Bench more strong and transparent. She also said that the current state of the judiciary's information technology (IT) system is worrisome. She also said that in the future, the goal is to establish a system that allows online registration, virtual hearings, online payments and downloading judgments from home.
She said that the Supreme Court has launched a separate portal for the Constitutional Bench, emphasizing the use of technology for the protection of the Constitution and the transparency of justice. Acting Chief Justice Malla said that the resolution of old cases pending in the judiciary has been given priority. According to her, 282 cases are currently pending in the Constitutional Bench. Among them, 8-year-old cases are pending since 2074 BS. She also said that the Supreme Court has set a specific target to resolve the cases of the Constitutional Bench.
The court has also set another target to resolve election-related disputes within 6 months from the date of registration. She clarified that such a deadline was set to end the situation where cases were not resolved even after the validity of the elections was over in the past.
Acting Chief Justice Malla's statement
Today, in the context of strengthening a Constitutional Bench, we have brought forward this portal in the first phase for the protection of the Constitution and the transparency of justice. Of course, now when talking about the role of the judiciary, we have a lot of responsibility as the guardians of the Constitution to protect the freedom of a citizen.
Not only the Constitutional Bench, but all our honorable judges have the responsibility to interpret every issue related to a Constitution. But the new constitution has arranged a constitutional bench to look into some different nature of issues, especially to ensure the essence of federalism. In which, especially now we are mainly looking at this election-related dispute or then we are looking at the issues of the boundaries and balance of this province, the union and the center, and then we are looking at the other serious interpretation questions.
But as I said, all the honorable judges of our court interpret the constitution, we are looking at some certain different nature of provisions in it.
Now, looking at the whole, today we have many cases with the judiciary. What we see now, especially if we look at the total amount, now we have 275 thousand 678 cases pending before us, if we look at what we have seen up to this Falgun. Of which 95,204 have been disposed of across Nepal, or only 34.5 percent of the cases have been disposed of.
If we look at the records of the Supreme Court, it is clear that there is a need to dispose of many cases. Looking at the records of the Supreme Court, if we look at the records up to today, if we look at the records up to yesterday, there are 33,667 cases, 6,536 have been disposed of, and the remaining 27,131 cases are pending. And within these records, when we enter the Constitutional Bench, today 282 cases are pending in the Constitutional Bench, and the records up to the 17th were 282 cases, let's say 282. But the sad thing is that we have cases pending in this Constitutional Bench from 2074 BS or 8-year-old cases. And along with that, we also have cases that are up to a year old that are not even due.
And this has made us feel that we should be a little serious and move forward in the administration of justice in a slightly different way. This does not mean that other cases are not on priority, at the same time, when we consider the full bench, the large bench, the decisions of each case are important for every person or organization.
But in today's context, just as we prioritized other cases, now we have set some goals to expedite the resolution of the pending cases by giving even more priority to the constitutional bench. While setting this goal, we have 282 cases pending with us, cases pending for up to 8 years, and when we say what our current goal is, we have set a goal that we will resolve at least 33 percent of the cases within these three months.
