Annual Report 1999-2000 the purposes of tackling the arrears in Courts, long-pending cases should be bifurcated into a separate class and dealt with separately under an ad hoc dispensation by re-employing, if necessary, retired judicial officers and judicial staff. □ ITie pendency of cases in each Criminal Court should be fed into and analysed on computers. TTie progress in the disposal of cases should be monitored on the computer. Initially, a spread-sheet should be prepared to indicate the different types of criminal cases pending in the particular Court and the length of the pendency, so as to evolve appropriate bench-marks for fast track procedures. 3.71 The Commission had also recommended changes in the substantive law as follows: □ There be a process of progressive and massive decriminalisation of offences now recognised and made culpable as penal offences. They should be treated as merely actionable wrongs for which compensation and not punitive action is the appropriate remedy. □ The class of compoundable offences under the IPC and other laws should be widened. □ In the disposal of arrears of criminal cases, experienced criminal lawyers be requested to work as part-time Judges on a particular stipulated number of days, on the pattern of 'Recorders' and 'Assistant-Recorders' in the United Kingdom. There is an existing provision in the Criminal Procedure Code for honorary Judicial Magistrates, which has not been imaginatively utilised, or its potential realised even in part. □ The system of'plea bai^aining' be introduced on the pattern of recommendations already made by the Law Commission of India. □ Magistrates and Sessions Judges, while remanding persons under trial to judicial custody, should clearly indicate in the very order of remand itself, the terminus a quo. In other words, the judicial remands should be self-limiting and should indicate the date on which the undertrial prisoner would automatically be entitled to bail in terms of the conditions prescribed by the Supreme Court. □ There should be a comprehensive training package for programmes of training of all judicial personnel and all Court administrators. □ In the proportion of population-judge ratio, India ranks amongst lowest in the world; this needs to be rectified. 3.72 The Action Taken Report (ATR) for the year 1998-99, lists the steps taken by the Central Government on these recommendations. These included the dispatch of letters to the State Governments stressing the need for financial autonomy to the Courts, and to the National Judicial Academy to develop programmes for speedy clearance of criminal cases in courts, and interaction with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the extensive computerisation in the subordinate judiciary. With regard to changes 38