Fast-track courts without capacity, budget will only be fast on paper

On July 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, breaking his silence on the massive students’ protests over the exam paper leak issue, announced that fast-track courts will ensure swift and stringent punishment in such cases. An order of the Delhi High Court, issued the same evening, provides the first concrete shape to that announcement.

Reflex action to crises

Few policies in India enjoy the immunity from debate accorded to fast-track courts. They are announced after an outrage, welcomed across party lines and treated almost as self-executing solutions. The words seem to settle the argument. A court placed on a fast track must necessarily deliver justice faster.

A fast-track court in India is almost never a new court. It is an existing judge with a new nameplate.

But why should that assumption be accepted? For a quarter century, the fast-track court has been the Indian state’s reflex answer to every crisis of confidence in criminal justice.

The record tells a sobering story.

The announcement is usually the achievement. The speed rarely follows.

Old court with new nameplate

The high court has created one specially designated fast-track court at the Rouse Avenue Courts Complex. District Judge Anu Grover Baliga will try offences under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, and connected offences. All pending Delhi cases under the law stand transferred to her court. Similar courts are reportedly being readied under the Bombay, Calcutta and Madhya Pradesh high courts.

A fast-track court in India is almost never a new court. It is an existing judge with a new nameplate.

The Delhi High Court’s order posts an existing judicial officer from the Mediation Centre to the new court. No fresh judicial post, no dedicated prosecution team, no additional staff, no forensic support and no separate budget accompany her. Nor does the order prescribe any distinctive case-management procedure. Whatever her caseload gains in speed, the caseload she left behind loses.

Huge gap between priority and capacity

The central distinction is between priority and capacity. A court gets priority when a category of cases is moved to the head of the queue. The system gains capacity only when it receives additional judges, courtrooms, staff, prosecutors, forensic facilities and working time. Moving passengers into a separate queue does not increase the number of counters serving them.

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The Public Examinations Act itself does not create statutory special courts. Its 19 sections define unfair practices, create offences and regulate investigation; they contain no machinery for a separate trial court. Parliament knows how to create special courts when it wants to. It did so in the laws on child sexual abuse and money laundering. Here it chose not to. The latest arrangement is therefore an administrative designation, resting on the high court’s power to distribute work among its judges.

How fast-track courts came to be

The pattern has a long ancestry. India’s first large fast-track court programme entered judicial administration as an accounting entry, not a reform. In 2000, the Eleventh Finance Commission allocated ₹502.90 crore to create 1,734 additional courts. The commission is the constitutional body that divides tax revenues between the Centre and the states. The new courts were to clear serious criminal trials pending for years, especially those of undertrials in jail. The money came as a five-year grant. The courts were, by design, temporary.

Concentrated judicial resources can dispose of large numbers of cases. It does not prove that giving a court a special name automatically creates those resources.

The judges came on temporary, ad hoc terms: serving officers promoted for a spell, retired judges recalled, lawyers recruited on contract. The Supreme Court blessed the arrangement in Brij Mohan Lal vs Union of India in 2002, settling who could be appointed and how. By March 2005, 1,562 courts were functioning. The scheme was extended until March 2011, when 1,192 remained. In 2015, a study found that close to 36 lakh cases were transferred to the fast-track courts, out of which, close to 30.7 lakh had been disposed of.

Uneven finances a weak point

Does that record not establish the success of fast-track courts? It establishes something more qualified. Concentrated judicial resources can dispose of large numbers of cases. It does not prove that giving a court a special name automatically creates those resources. Central financial assistance ended in 2011. The experiment contracted just when it might have been converted into durable judicial capacity.

In a second round of Brij Mohan Lal vs Union of India in 2012, the Supreme Court declined to force the Centre to keep paying. But it warned states against continuing the scheme indefinitely on an ad hoc and temporary basis. They had to decide whether to end it or make it permanent. Most chose to end it.

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The warning went unheeded in design. The 14^th Finance Commission later contemplated 1,800 fast-track courts between 2015 and 2020. Yet only 879 were functioning across 22 states and Union territories by the end of December 2025, funded by states without central support. The gap between 1,800 proposed and 879 functioning is more than an implementation deficit. It reveals the recurring weakness of the model. A nationally announced priority is left dependent upon uneven state finances and high court administration.

Work overload can affect productivity

Each fresh outrage has revived the label. After the December 2012 Delhi gang rape, New Delhi announced new fast-track courts for sexual offences within a fortnight. In 2019 came the largest wave. A centrally sponsored scheme sanctioned 1,023 fast-track special courts (FTSCs), including exclusive child sexual abuse courts, funded from the Nirbhaya Fund. By April 2026, 774 such courts were functioning, including 398 exclusive courts. The Centre had released ₹1,259.51 crore under a scheme supporting one judicial officer and seven staff members for each court.

A data-driven study of the Supreme Court found that relatively small increases in judicial capacity, or meaningful controls on adjournments, could sharply reduce delays.

This is closer to genuine capacity creation. Yet the figures show why infrastructure alone cannot guarantee speed. According to a Law Ministry reply in the Rajya Sabha, FTSCs received 81,471 cases and disposed of 76,319 in 2023. In 2024, they received 88,902 and disposed of 85,595. The ministry reported a sharp divergence in 2025, with 1,43,936 cases registered and 66,500 disposed of. Year-end pendency was stated to have increased from 2,04,122 in 2024 to 2,45,579 in 2025, although the figures published in the reply do not fully reconcile.

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The implication should be stated carefully. The figures do not prove that the courts failed. They show that a fast-track system can still accumulate cases when incoming work exceeds its ability to finish them. Operations researchers describe this through queueing theory. When a system works close to its maximum capacity, a small increase in incoming work produces a disproportionate rise in waiting time.

Fast judge cannot compensate for slow lab

A data-driven study of the Supreme Court found it operating in a nearly fully-utilised condition. Its simulations suggested that relatively small increases in judicial capacity, or meaningful controls on adjournments, could sharply reduce delays. Justice AP Shah’s Law Commission made a related point in its 245th Report, which described the backlog as “grim” and worsening. Its remedy was rational judicial manpower planning based on filing and disposal rates. That is a less dramatic prescription than announcing a fast-track court. It is also more likely to identify what a court actually needs.

Trials, after all, are slow for reasons that sit outside the courtroom. Paper-leak cases can involve encrypted communications, digital devices, payment trails, impersonation networks and accused persons spread across several states. A judge cannot begin recording evidence until investigators identify the network, laboratories examine devices and prosecutors produce an intelligible charge-sheet.

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The Union law ministry has cautioned that the results of fast-track courts depend on investigation, evidence, forensic support, witnesses, prosecutors and cooperation among institutions. A fast judge cannot compensate for a slow laboratory. Renaming the courtroom changes none of this.

Competent prosecution matters more

A dedicated court can deliver real gains, and honesty requires conceding them. One accountable judge, an exclusive caseload and daily hearings produced a verdict in the Delhi gang rape trial within nine months. Concentration can build expertise and stop paper-leak prosecutions from disappearing into the general criminal docket.

A study by the Centre for Law and Policy Research, titled ‘The Myth of Speedy and Substantive Justice’ (2015) examined special courts for sexual offences in Karnataka. It found many lacked distinct procedures, adequate resources, specialised training and victim support. Without these, it concluded, they risked functioning like ordinary criminal courts. Specialisation requires more than assigning a category label to an existing courtroom.

Courts arrive after the paper has leaked. Secure examination design, vendor scrutiny, access logs, cyber audits and accountability within examination authorities remain the first line of defence. A fast-track court is the ambulance. Examination governance is the guardrail.

The deeper irony lies in the law the new court will administer. The Public Examinations Act itself was Parliament’s answer to the previous wave of leaks. Passed in February 2024, it prescribes three to five years in prison for cheating. Organised leaks draw five to 10 years and a fine of at least ₹1 crore. The promise then was that stern punishment would deter. Two years later, a national entrance test stands compromised again. Deterrence depends partly on swift consequences. But certainty of detection and competent prosecution matter more than the severity promised from a public platform. Leaks happen at the printing press and the examination hall, where no courtroom, however swift, operates.

The ideal way

The latest initiative should therefore begin with a published implementation plan. The Centre should disclose how many paper leak cases exist, where they are pending, and how many courts their volume justifies. State-wise orders should follow, prepared with the respective high courts, which constitutionally administer the subordinate judiciary. Every designated court should be a net addition to capacity. Where a judge is transferred, her position should be backfilled. Otherwise, delay is merely shifted from one set of litigants to another.

Each court needs a dedicated prosecutor, trained staff and digital-forensic expertise, with protocols for device seizure, electronic records, financial tracing and coordination across jurisdictions. The courts should employ stage-wise case management. Charges should be considered promptly and witness dates fixed in blocks. Digital evidence should be indexed before trial, and adjournments recorded by reason rather than simply counted.

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Performance must be measured through median time at each stage, the ratio of new cases to disposals, vacancy days and adjournment patterns. Conviction rates should not become the measure of success. An acquittal reached fairly and promptly is also an exercise of justice.

Finally, judicial response must be joined to prevention. Courts arrive after the paper has leaked, and the examination has been compromised. Secure examination design, vendor scrutiny, access logs, cyber audits and accountability within examination authorities remain the first line of defence. A fast-track court is the ambulance. Examination governance is the guardrail.

The Delhi model

The Delhi court can become a useful model if it receives a manageable docket and the institutions around it move at comparable speed. It may also expose where the delays actually lie. The model should be reviewed periodically and either institutionalised or discontinued transparently, not left to survive as an ad hoc designation. It must not become a nameplate that shifts a political crisis from the government’s table to the judiciary’s and calls the transfer a solution.

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The Law Commission warned as early as 1958 that “mass production methods or assembly line techniques” would be incompatible with the sound administration of justice. The purpose of a fast-track court must be justice without avoidable delay, not justice hurried to satisfy the calendar.