Précis: A passage on judicial reform and the right to timely justice

Sample original passage: The right to timely justice is constitutional in claim and statistical in fact, and the gap between the two has widened steadily over four decades. The Supreme Court has, in a series of judgments beginning with Hussainara Khatoon in 1979, held that speedy trial is implicit in the protection of life and liberty under Article 21. The same court today operates with a pendency in the high courts of more than sixty lakh cases, and a pendency in the subordinate courts of more than four crore. Three structural causes account for the persistence of the problem. The first is judicial strength: India has approximately twenty-one judges per million population, against an authorised strength that would itself require doubling, and against an OECD average several times that figure. Vacancies in the subordinate judiciary persist for years; vacancies in the higher judiciary persist for months but at a stage where each absence affects the disposal rate of an entire bench. The second is procedural: the Code of Civil Procedure permits multiple stages of adjournment, the Code of Criminal Procedure permits successive interlocutory appeals, and the absence of effective case-management protocols allows cases to drift between hearings for years without disposal. The third is infrastructural: many subordinate court complexes lack functional digital case-management systems, e-filing has been adopted unevenly across states, and basic services such as recording of evidence by video conference still operate as exceptions. Reform must therefore be three-tracked: a sustained programme of judicial recruitment to a higher authorised strength, procedural reform that compresses unnecessary delay without compromising due process, and the completion of the digital case-management infrastructure begun under the e-Courts mission. The constitutional promise of speedy justice cannot be kept by judgments alone; it requires capacity that the system has not yet been given.

Model précis (≈ 240 words): The right to timely justice is constitutional in claim and statistical in fact, and the gap between the two has widened over four decades. The Supreme Court has held since 1979 that speedy trial is implicit in the protection of life and liberty, but pendency in the high courts now exceeds sixty lakh cases and in the subordinate courts four crore. Three structural causes explain the persistence. First, judicial strength: India has roughly twenty-one judges per million population, far below the authorised strength itself and far below comparable economies. Subordinate-judiciary vacancies persist for years; higher-judiciary vacancies persist for months but disable entire benches. Second, procedure: the civil and criminal codes permit multiple adjournments and successive interlocutory appeals, and the absence of effective case-management protocols allows cases to drift between hearings for years without disposal. Third, infrastructure: many subordinate court complexes lack functional digital case-management systems, e-filing has been adopted unevenly across states, and basic services such as recording evidence by video conference remain exceptional rather than routine. Reform must therefore be three-tracked. A sustained programme of judicial recruitment must lift working strength towards the authorised establishment and beyond. Procedural reform must compress unnecessary delay without compromising due process. The digital case-management infrastructure begun under the e-Courts mission must be completed across all states. The constitutional promise of speedy justice cannot be kept by judgments alone; it requires institutional capacity that the system has not yet been given.