ACCESS TO JUSTICE TOWARDS THE CREATION OF INCLUSIVE SOCIAL ORDER against the country’s population is one of the lowest in the world and the manpower (support staff) and infrastructure provided is dismal.”51 Besides the factum of dreadful disproportion or yawning gap between the number of judges manning courts and the bulging population in India, there are other serious impediments in meeting the goals of access to justice for providing justice to all. Most recently, at the 11th Chief Ministers and Chief Justices Conference, held in Delhi on April 30, 2022,52 the issue of access to justice came up for deliberation in an inter-face between the Executive and Judiciary, while discussing the major challenges being faced by the judiciary. The Prime Minister solemnly maintained that for making justicesystem more accessible, the language of law and of the courts should be made as simple as could be easily understood by the common man without the use of incomprehensible legal jargons. The Chief Justice of India, on the other hand, mooted that for avoiding the mounting pendency of cases, in which more than half of the litigation is credited to the government, “weakness in both legislative processes and executive capabilities” need to be removed.53 Obviously, there is a “desperate need” to overcome the hurdles of delay in the administration of justice.54 In view of rising “specialisation” and increasing “complex regulatory and commercial aspects, which require esoteric appraisal and adjudication”, creation of tribunals, “conceptualised as specialised bodies with domain-specific knowledge expertise,” has been conceived as “one solution in the ever-constant strive to increase access to justice.”55 However, the very objective of providing “faster and more efficacious adjudication of issues” through specialised forum for specific type of disputes is awfully belied for reasons of huge pendency before a number of Tribunals,56 coupled with the fact “when a litigant has to spend too much money, time and effort to approach the adjudicating authority to get justice.”57 51 52 53 54 55 Id., para 11. This Conference took place after a gap of six years; it was last held on April 24, 2016. See, Editorial: “Chief Justice Ramana is Right,” Hindustan Times, May 2, 2022. See, Rojer Mathew, para 13 (per Ranjan Gogoi, C.J.I.). See, id., para 13 read with para 12, and para 339 (per Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, J.). 56 See The 272nd Report of the Law Commission of 2017, highlighting the high level of pendency before the Tribunals like Central Administrative Tribunal, Railway Claims Tribunal, Debt Recovery Tribunal, Customs, Excise, and Service Tax Appeal Tribunal, Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, which affects the very objective of tribunalisation, cited in Rojer Mathew, para 251, per Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, J., while pointing out shortcomings of the current framework of tribunals mainly due to systemic and administrative problems). See also, Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (UOI) and Ors., per L. Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta, and S. Ravindra Bhat, JJ., MANU/SC/0429/2021, para 59: “The main reason for tribunalisation, which is to provide speedy justice, is not achieved as tribunals are wilting under the unbearable weight of the exploding docket.” See, Rojer Mathew, para 378: “In India, where delays plague the tribunals, a client will not hurriedly approach a tribunal even if he has a genuine grievance,” per Deepak Gupta, J. 57 13