hyderabad: With a view that it is better to do our bit first rather than waiting for the wishes to come true, chief justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan of Telangana high court on Saturday took an initiative to form two special benches to hear the criminal appeals, quash pleas etc in criminal cases exclusively that will work on alternate Saturdays. He himself presided over one of the benches and started hearing the criminal matters that are suffering on account of lack of sufficient judges. Sitting along with justice T Vinod Kumar, the CJ heard several matters and disposed off 4 criminal appeals on Saturday itself.


The other bench, a single one, presided over by justice G sri Devi resolved 35 cases. The same benches would sit exclusively on October 19, also a Saturday. The CJ also decided to continue these two benches which will function on first and third Saturdays of every month. High courts do not function on Saturdays as judges have to prepare their judgements. Given the fact that the Telangana high court came into being on January 1, 2019 with more than 1.87 lakh cases backlog and there are only 14 judges though the sanctioned strength is 24, justice Chauhan earlier requested the higher authorities at delhi to enhance the judges strength to 42 and also to fill them all so that they can work towards achieving the distinction of being a no pendency court in the country.


That did not happen. In the meantime, the criminal side people are suffering. All the appeals pertaining to CBI and ACB cases are pending from the year 2006. And in other criminal cases where persons were convicted by trial courts, their appeals before the high court are pending from the year 2007. In life conviction cases, the appeals are pending from the year 2012. As bails are not being granted to the life convicts, a division bench earlier gave a blanket order directing the trial courts to grant bail to all those convicts who have already completed five years of their sentence.


This was because, there is no hope in the near future that their cases will be heard and decided and an acquittal too would fail to give them any relief at the end if the current pace continues. Later, the HC was bifurcated into two HCs for AP and Telangana and the problem only got compounded due to lack of judges. It was in this background, chief justice Chauhan took the initiative to do something within his purview rather than waiting for the good things to happen. Let us make them happen, is his message, said senior counsel Pradyumna Kumar Reddy who is well versed with the criminal cases.


But he cautioned that as the judges are already burdened with heavy work with each one looking after more than six subjects, the ultimate solution however is on the central authorities who have to recruit more number of judges for quick disposal and speedy justice, Pradyumna said.


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