Justice delivery needs to be speed up: Law Ministry

New Delhi, Apr 20 : Law Minister Hansraj Bhardwaj said on Saturday that delivery of justice needed to be speeded up in the country.

He was addressing a joint conference along with Chief Justice K.G Balakrishnan after the conference of State Chief Ministers and Judges of High Courts here.

"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said we should speed up the administration of justice at all levels. And thereafter, everything has been discussed threadbare," Bhardwaj said.

Earlier, addressing the conference, Dr. Singh had acknowledged that corruption was a major challenge and also admitted that pendency of cases in courts was delaying the delivery of justice.

Chief Justice Balakrishnan said that the country did not have enough courts to try corruption cases that were on the rise.

"There are some 6,100 cases of corruption, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigated cases, but we have less number of courts in all the States," Balakrishnan said.

A little more than 13,000 law officials serve a population of over one billion people that makes India's ratio of judges to people among the lowest in the world.

The overstretched judiciary has been struggling to cope with ounting cases problems. Several proposals have been made, but ery few have actually been implemented.

ANI