India, Dec. 16 -- The role of infrastructural and personnel deficiencies in delaying justice delivery has been flagged again, this time by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant. These problems are now a chronic affliction of the Indian judicial system, with the symptoms being trial delays, overcrowding in prisons with undertrials held for long periods, and even, in some cases, the matter reaching resolution long after the plaintiff or defendant is dead. The personnel deficiency, including judges, has become a leitmotif of discussions about delayed justice in the country. Against a Supreme Court-set target of 50 judges per million population, as per a reply from the law ministry in the Lok Sabha in February last year, the actual strength stood at 21 per million. Thousands of vacancies for judicial officers in the lower courts remain unfilled; the constitutional courts, from time to time, fall short of the sanctioned strength for judges for months, before the executive and the top judiciary remedy this. Add the shortage of support staff to the mix, and it isn't difficult to imagine the serious constraints that justice delivery faces in the country. Without adequate numbers manning the courts, the existing strength is over-burdened and is likely to function below the expected levels of productivity. A similar story of deficiency plays out in physical infrastructure. The country has 22,372 court halls, as per the law ministry. But this is hardly adequate, given as per a 2024 report published by the department of justice, a survey of judicial and non-judicial personnel found a higher proportion perceived existing infrastructure to be inadequate than those who felt otherwise. It is important to note here that the survey pool represents the existing strength in the country's courts, and this is far short of the sanctioned strength. This means that the infrastructural deficiency is a lot worse than it appears at first glance. Technology integration under the e-Courts Mission Mode Project of the National e-Governance Plan - which was supposed to ease functioning of the courts - is still behind benchmarks, with many courts yet to enter the second phase of e-Courts initiative that was piloted in 2015. Without addressing these deficiencies, there is very little hope of moving the needle on pending adjudication. Meanwhile, mediation must be encouraged and technology must be deployed in a manner that makes judicial processes less time-consuming, as the CJI pointed out on Sunday. The judiciary and the executive certainly must plug existing gaps, but also need to look beyond them....