India vows to get to work on 25 mln court cases

India pledged on Saturday to cut the millions of pending court cases by 40 percent in just six months, without explaining how it might achieve the ambitious aim. India has 25 million cases pending in various courts but a new scheme hopes to change all that, Law Minister Veerappa Moily said, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. "This is a multi-pronged programme aimed at reducing pending cases by 40 percent," he said in the western city of Ahmedabad. "This is a nationwide programme," he added, but did not divulge details of the plan. Moily noted a recent study which showed because of the massive case backlog, only nine percent of people in India who have disputes with others go to court to seek justice. "The rest of them do not approach the courts as they think that they cannot get justice in the present system," he said. Last year, Justice V.V.S. Rao of the Andhra Pradesh state high court estimated it could take the Indian judiciary 320 years to clear the backlog of cases that he estimated at 32 million. As a result of the logjam, litigation often drags on for decades, particularly in civil matters, while judicial delays can leave people awaiting trial on relatively minor criminal charges languishing in jail for years. A shortfall of judges and the lack of a "settlement culture" in India are some of the reasons blamed for the backlog. Indian states, which have responsibility for the administration of justice, have been seeking new ways to tackle the issue -- from evening courts to mediation and arbitration schemes -- to settle some matters informally.