KATHMANDU: On Wednesday, the apex court endorsed the second five-year strategic plan for judiciary, which is aimed at bringing in reforms.

A full court meeting of Supreme Court (SC) justices, which was presided over by Chief Justice Min Bahadur Rayamajhi, approved the plan to be enforced from Thursday.

According to Ram Krishna Timalsena, registrar at the SC, the plan has estimated Rs 19 billion for the next five years in order to run various reform programmes.

As per the plan, an estimated Rs 8 billion will be spent

by the apex court as the recurrent expenditure while

Rs 11 billion has been estimated for capital expenditure to run development activities in the judiciary.

Likewise, half of the backlog cases will be dealt with in this five-year period. In the first such plan five years ago, around 6,000 backlog cases were addressed. “After half of the backlog cases are addressed, the courts will run normally,” Timalsena maintained.

There are 11,163 cases pending in the SC alone at the moment. Their number was 17,447 when the first strategic plan was adopted.

The SC has adopted 12 strategic methods to reform the judiciary, which include panel hearing system, differentiated case hearing management and setting

of working standard for the judges.

The apex court will also conduct a study over the possibility of running “night courts” in the Kathmandu Valley for delivering prompt justice.

Apex court rule for timely justice

KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court has adopted a strict rule against delay in case proceedings.According to the new provision passed by the apex court on Wednesday, it can lapse the stay order if a client is found involved in lingering the case after receiving the order.

“The new rule will help check such ill-practices,” said Hemanta Rawal, assistant spokesperson for the SC. A full bench had passed the rule amending the Supreme Court and

Appellate Court Regulations. – HNS