Approximately 20 per cent of the judicial officers in the country don’t even have proper courtrooms to sit. There is a shortage of 4,100 court halls and 26 per cent of the court premises have no separate toilets for women and 16 per cent do not even have toilets. Only 54 per cent courts have purified drinking water facilities. Shocking, isn’t it?

The damning information comes from Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, who presided over the inauguration of two wings of the annexe building at the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court on Saturday. News agencies reported Justice Ramana saying the “failure to deliver timely justice can cost the country as much as 9 per cent of the annual GDP” and without adequate infrastructure for courts, “we cannot aspire to fill this gap”.