President Ram Nath Kovind said on Tuesday that “detailed deliberations and systemic efforts” are necessary to clear pendency of cases in courts, PTI reported. Kovind said that the delay in passing verdicts is a hurdle in the way of delivering justice.

“Happy that the Supreme Court has followed up my suggestion and started making its judgements available in nine regional languages,” Kovind said at the 70th Constitution Day celebrations at the Supreme Court in New Delhi. “In the days to come, the list can include more languages, so that common people can read the verdicts of the highest court.”

Kovind said all stakeholders, including the bench and the bar, have to make a collective effort to make justice available to everyone. “Another hurdle in the way of justice is the delay and the resulting backlog,” he said. “Clearing this bottleneck requires detailed deliberations and systemic efforts.”

At the event, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde stressed on the importance of using Artificial Intelligence in dealing with problems the judiciary faces. The top court also launched its official mobile application and a translation software called Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software, which translates the judgements into nine official languages.

In June, former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had requested the government to bring Constitutional amendments to raise the strength of the Supreme Court from its maximum of 31 judges and to increase the retirement age of High Court judges from 62 to 65. He said there were 58,669 pending cases in the top court, and the number is rising due to more cases being filed.

On July 31, the Union Cabinet had approved the proposal to increase the strength of judges in the Supreme Court. The strength was last increased from 26 to 31 in 2009, and all positions got filled this year for the first time in over a decade.

In September, the Centre approved the appointment of four more judges to the Supreme Court, raising its strength to 34.