Law minister prioritises to create all-India judicial service

The creation of an all-India judicial service to recruit judges for the lower courts of the country is among the priorities of Ravi Shankar Prasad, who has returned to the Law Ministry for the second time. The ministry has also been consistently working on improving the judicial infrastructure with more courtrooms and appointment of judges.

Over 5,000 vacancies of judicial officers/judges in the lower courts have resulted in a massive backlog of cases. Another priority would be the finalisation of a memorandum of the procedure to guide the appointment and transfer of Supreme Court and high court judges.

The issue had now been pending for over two years now with the SC collegium and the government failing to reach a consensus. Successive governments have also been working on making India a hub of international arbitration. It has taken several steps to change laws dealing with commercial disputes.