(Disclaimer: The following narrative has been drawn from our experiences with the judicial system over the last six years and is not fictional; it is a composite of the stories narrated to us as part of our conversations with multiple advocates practising in various courts across India. Please see the introduction to this series for more details.)
Morning Session
Upon reaching the District Court Complex premises at 9:30 AM, Advocate A is already exhausted. She has spent the morning finishing household chores, cooking lunch for her six-year-old daughter, and picking up the lab report from her gynaecologist. She parks her car at the advocates’ parking lot and disembarks with five massive paper bundles in her hand. One of the bundles is coming untied and she struggles to balance all of them as she carefully navigates her way through the many cars parked close together.
The first order of business is to ensure that her new petition, seeking a stay order, is successfully filed in the next hour so that she may make an urgent mentioning before the judge. The filing section is located on the other side of the Court Complex, far away from the advocates’ parking space and it takes Advocate A nearly 20 minutes to make her way through the bustling crowd. The filing section is teeming with advocates, all seeking to push ahead of the queues and ensure that their case is filed first. When at last she reaches the filing counter, the harried staff inform her that server issues have resulted in the computer freezing, and e-filing, which has been made mandatory in the Court in the last two months, will therefore take more time than anticipated.
Advocate A waits anxiously by the filing counter for the computers to work smoothly again. By now, it is nearly 10:15 AM and she knows that the morning session in Courtroom VIII will start in 15 minutes. She uses her phone to open the court’s website and taps on the “causelist” option. A case in which Advocate A is scheduled to appear has been listed at #4 on the causelist for Courtroom VIII. If e-filing continues to take time, it is highly likely that Advocate A will be absent in court when her case is being called. Thankfully, a stroke of luck ensures that her case is successfully filed online, and she hurries towards the Courtroom.
Courtroom VIII is located on the third floor of the main Court building. Advocate A decides to use one of the two lifts present in the ground floor lobby, exhausted from the long walk across the Court Complex premises. However, when she reaches the lobby, she is confronted by a long queue of advocates and litigants, pushing their way to crowd around the lift doors. In spite of Advocate A being advised by her doctor to avoid exertion, she makes her way slowly up the staircase to the third floor determined to make it to the Courtroom on time.
The server issues seem to have affected multiple facilities across the Court and the case display board outside Courtroom VIII does not appear to be functioning. Advocate A is, therefore, unable to find the status of proceedings in the Courtroom. Upon entering the Courtroom, she realises that she has arrived too late, and her case has been passed over to the afternoon session.
However, there is no time to rest; Advocate A has multiple cases which have been listed before four other Courtrooms today. While two of those Courtrooms are located in the main Court building, the others are in the additional blocks. Advocate A attempts to take a shortcut from the main building to Block-II, weaving through the crammed pathways with haphazardly arranged desks and chairs for notaries, who otherwise lack a designated seating area within the Court Complex. Neither the case display boards outside the Courtrooms, nor the cause lists on the Court website, are being updated in real-time today. Advocate A seeks the help of her friends to receive updates, but they are sporadic due to poor internet connection in many parts of the Court buildings.
Afternoon Session
She is exhausted and extremely thirsty by lunch time since the drinking water facilities in most of the Blocks are non-functional, and she was unable to get her water bottle when she exited the car with all her files. The Court building also has very few seating facilities in the corridors and it was one of those days when Advocate A was not offered a place to sit, despite being visibly pregnant.
Advocate A finally makes her way to the Bar Association block, where two rooms reserved for the use of women advocates on the third floor. Upon reaching the women’s Association rooms, Advocate A finally gets to use the washroom facilities – these are the only washrooms in the entirety of the Court Complex which are maintained on a semi-regular basis, as the female advocates pool in to hire their own cleaning staff. On this particular day, the toilet flush in one of the four stalls in the washroom is not working properly, but thankfully some of the other female advocates have been exactly where she is currently and let her jump ahead in the queue.
Advocate A retires to Chamber #357, which she shares with a senior and four other junior advocates. Her desk is in one corner of the room. She leaves one set of case files on the desk and attempts to search for another, to prepare for a case which is set to be heard in the afternoon session. The room is small and cramped, with case files and reference books thrown haphazardly around in no discernible pattern, so finding a file for a case which hasn’t had a hearing in a few months is no easy feat. When seated at her rickety and old wooden desk, Advocate A feels hot and flushed owing to the lack of ventilation in the air. There is only one fan in the room, which is located directly above the desk of the senior advocate.
After a quick lunch at her desk, Advocate A prepares to go back to Courtroom 2 for the passed-over matters from the morning session. Although she makes it to the Courtroom in time, the lack of designated seating space for advocates towards the front of the Courtroom results in her being jostled until she rams into the sharp edges of the advocate stand. When her matter is called at last, she elbows her way to the stand, barely manages to adjust the mic (which is at a very high height) and argues her case.
At last, after the Courtroom session is over, Advocate A makes her way to the parking lot. She will have to take a break to pick up her daughter from school and drop her at her parents’ house, before returning to the Chamber to continue her work and preparation for the next day. Advocate A wishes that the Court Complex had a dedicated creche facility since her parents are getting old and may not be able to take care of an infant once her new child is born. She will have to make new plans in the future to ensure that she is able to continue her work as an advocate, which she finds extremely fulfilling. She exits the Court Complex with her mind in a whirl.
Areas for Intervention
In order to ensure that someone like Advocate A is able to fulfil her duties and effectively contribute towards justice, the following improvements should be implemented in Courts:
- Arrangements for smooth conducting of cases, including working digital infrastructure for e-filing, video-conferencing facilities, and real-time updates about case status;
- Facilities for physically navigating the Court Complex spaces, including parking lots adjacent to the Court building, sufficient lifts, well-planned pathways, orderly and functional offices, and clean, well-maintained toilets; and
- Specific amenities for pregnancy and childcare, including creche/daycare facilities, emergency medical care/first aid, and adequate ergonomic seating.
(This article is the second in a series outlining the need for user-centric court infrastructure in India, addressing the requirements of diverse users to ensure universally accessible, adaptable, efficient, safe & comfortable, and sustainable courts for all.)
Priyamvadha Shivaji and Shreya Tripathy are Senior Resident Fellows, Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
[Ed Note: The piece has been edited by Harshitha Adari and published by Tamanna Yadav]