Chief Justice Shrestha had formed a committee headed by seniormost justice Girish Chandra Lal in August to study irregularities within the judiciary and recommend ways to control and prevent such irregularities.
"While the Judicial Council, a separate structure from the judiciary, is the authorised body for the judges appointment process, the task of judicial reform and purification should be started from the appointment process itself. The judges should not be appointed, going beyond the bases of qualification -- honesty, capability, seniority and so on -- as envisaged by the constitution and other laws," it is stated in the report.
The report also states that it is the responsibility of the Judicial Council to maintain good governance in the judiciary through effective monitoring of judges' conduct. "To fulfill this responsibility, officials of the council should themselves be honest and committed to rule of law and justice delivery.
The Judicial Council should be able to identify good and bad or competent and incompetent judges," states the report.
However, the report has also highlighted that there is a fear among judges that they could be judged on the basis of newspaper reports and commentary. The report states that a situation in which orders or verdicts will be issued out of a psychology of avoiding such negative comment would be almost equivalent to the abduction of judicial freedom.
Likewise, the study committee has highlighted the inadequate number of justices at the Supreme Court as being behind the delay in settling cases. "If the justices are appointed immediately in the numbers envisaged by the constitution, the pending case load could be settled on time and this will gradually reduce the possibility of irregularities caused by delay in settling cases," reads the report.
The report speaks of the tendency to avoid hearing complicated cases and urges arrangements for setting up benches immediately after the cause-lists are published, as well as not assigning judges to tasks other than the hearing of cases.
Meanwhile, the study committee has underscored the necessity of an independent, competent, transparent, accessible and responsible legal profession.
"Alike to the judiciary, the legal profession also needs to be independent, fair, competent, transparent, accessible and responsible. For this, there should be an initiative to make necessary legal arrangements for the fees charged by lawyers, through coordination with Nepal Bar Council," states the report. "There should be effective execution of the provisions for registering law firms, taxation on lawyer fees, maintaining balance sheets and issuing invoices for payments made by clients," it is further stated.
Highlighting the trend of parties to a case to appoint a large number of advocates, the study committee has argued that this has wasted the time of the benches. The report has recommended a provision of allocating time to parties and appointing lead lawyers.
Likewise, the committee has suggested implementing a calendar system within the courts to settle cases within a set time. It has urged updating the laws, reforming court procedures and using technology for monitoring judicial staff.
Justices Baidyanath Upadhyaya and Govinda Kumar Upadhyaya were members of the study committee while Joint-Registrar Nahakul Subedi was member-secretary.
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