AGARTALA, April 18 (TIWN): Following SC's direction, Tripura High Court will hear on the pending cases as fast as possible. However, whereas the maximum cases are traffic accident related, it is to include many critical cases pending since decades. Reportedly, The Tripura High Court will hear cases during the 11-day summer vacation beginning May 15 to clear the backlog of pending cases. The High Court will hear old motor accident and criminal cases from May 15 to May 18, along with other urgent matter. During the remaining period till May 25, the court Registry will function daily for three hours from 10.30 a.m. Tripura High Court Chief Justice T. Vaiphei has taken this special step in view of the public interest involved, the official said requesting anonymity. On the other hand the Supreme Court has taken exemplary step to hear 5,300 cases during its summer vacations starting May 11. These cases are in addition to the proposal to get three Constitution Benches to hear matters of importance like triple 'talaq', WhatsApp user data protection and illegal immigration and Section 6A of the Citizenship Act.

When, Tripura High Court was set up in March 2013, the number of pending cases was 6,619, which currently had gone down to 2,283.  Many steps were taken to reduce the number of pending cases, including holding of regular lok adalats.The official said Chief Justice T. Vaiphei had stressed the need for early disposal of cases relating to children, women and elderly people, besides cases concerning marriage and domestic issues.

Earlier, before the Lok Adalats were conducted in attempt to down the case numbers, the number of pending cases were many more than the present. As per February month’s Assembly data, it has been known that total 3,185 cases are pending more than 10 years in Tripura, even after Supreme Court asked all the states to finish the long pending cases. The long pending cases result of various reasons as loopholes in investigation, lack of  fast track courts and delay game led by govt lawyers. Parimal Saha murder case was the longest pending case in Tripura's history which had delayed for long 35 years. But there are total 3,185 cases recorded with more than 10 years.

West Bengal's 64 Fast Track Courts are functional in full wave, UP's 80, Maharashtra 80, Andhra Pradesh 72, Gujrat 61; Tripura has only 3 Fast Track Courts resulting 1 lakh 51 thousand 275 Court pending cases only in the lower courts. But there is no plan and programme to set up more Fast Track Courts.

Altogether 1,51,193 cases have been pending for disposal in different courts of the state and of them as many as 3185 cases have been pending for more than 10 years and a few cases were pending more than 25 years.

 However, allegation raised against the state govt as there were three Fast Track Courts in the state at Sonamura, Khowai and Kailashahar but without any notification the state government made them dysfunctional when the conviction rate were not satisfactory rather almost half of the national average.