Judiciary awaits a big boost; Law University, Judicial Academy planned

The government has planned big to give the judiciary an institutional shape and improve its efficiency through establishing a Law University and 'National Judicial Academy', and implementing other projects.

The Prime Minister was learned to have given the necessary directives to implement the plan quickly.

The 'National Judicial Academy' is expected to be set up at Shibchar in Madaripur.

According to an official document, the government is also going to make another move to establish 'Law University' in the country.

The Prime Minister has given consent to establish this specialized university and necessary initiatives will be taken to implement the plan very soon.

The document says the government has taken a four-year development project titled ‘e-Judiciary’ involving Tk 2,690 crore.

The Project Evaluation Committee of Planning Ministry put forward the proposal for taking the project. Soon, the project proposal will be placed before Ecnec for its approval. After the implementation of the project, the digitization process of the judiciary will get the momentum.

Recently, Law Minister Anisul Huq told Parliament that there is one judge for every 1 lakh people in Bangladesh while in India one judge is there for 50,000 people. In England, there is one judge for 20,000 people, while one judge for 10,000 people in the USA, France, and Italy.

He also said the number of total pending cases in higher and lower courts in the country is around 36.40 lakh as of September last year.

There are only seven judges in the Appellate Division to dispose of 22,596 cases while 97 judges in the High Court to dispose of 4.91 lakh cases and 1967 judges in lower courts to dispose of some 31.28 lakh cases.

To speed up the case disposal process, the Awami League government in its tenure has appointed 768 assistant judges in the lower courts while 100 assistant judges will be appointed through the 13th and 14th Bangladesh Judicial Service.

Apart from the appointment process of new judges, the government is working to create new posts for judges to reduce the backlog of cases.

It has established 41 Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunals and appointed judges there while the process to create another six Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunals is at the last stage.

Besides, seven cyber tribunals have been established and they will have judges soon.

Meanwhile, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Courts have been set up in Gazipur and Rangpur in addition to launching a process to establish seven Anti-Human Trafficking Tribunals.

According to an official document, the government is working to gear up the trial process by removing the scarcity of courtrooms and optimum use of the working hours for the quick disposal of cases.

The government is implementing a project for constructing chief judicial magistrate court buildings in 42 districts. Of them, construction has been completed in 27 districts while construction is on in 14 districts.

Besides, a process is on to formulate Development Project Proposal (DPP) to construct Chief Judicial Magistrate Courts in 22 districts.

The government has expanded district judge courts vertically to 27 districts while the DPP formulation process for the rest of the 37 districts is going on.

The government has taken an initiative for the training of judges in lower courts for bringing dynamism and pace in case disposal.

Another process to send 540 judges to the Western Sydney University of Australia has started while 351 judges have already received training. Some 396 judges also took training in National Judicial Academy in Bhupal, India while 15 judges took training in Japan in 2019 while 20 judges in China.