Chief Justice of India T S Thakur was on Saturday critical of the government for the delay in law enforcement and appointment of high court judges, saying the time has come to audit its performance by some process.

At a time when people are languishing in jails and others are crying for justice, the government can't be "sitting over the proposal (on judges' appointment) for more than two months", he said.

He was inaugurating a two-day legal seminar here. On the appointment of judges, he said that 50% selected candidates (for judges), which have been cleared (through various stages), are languishing with the government for the past two months.

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"Now, in a system where the judiciary is working at half strength, people are languishing in jails, people are crying for justice, when the chief justice and seniormost judges of high courts consider a person suitable, and it has gone through the chief minister and the governor, reached the law ministry, gone through the scrutiny of the IB, come to the Supreme Court collegium and the Chief Justice and other senior judges have removed the undeserving and sent only the most deserving candidates, why the government should be sitting on the proposal, I cannot understand," he said.

According to Justice Thakur, high courts across the country were running at half the strength, which has resulted in delayed justice.

"Today, there are 450 vacancies in the high courts. It is a large number, which is almost 50 per cent of the working strength of the high courts...," he said.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement that one obsolete law will be repealed every day, the CJI said the challenge was to enforce existing laws.

"The Prime Minister is committed as he says we are repealing a law every day, and, by this standard, we will have 1,700 laws repealed by the time he finishes his tenure.

"I believe that he has already repealed around 300 laws and 1,400 more can be repealed. These are dead laws, those which are obsolete and which are irrelevant. There are some old colonial laws which have no relevance today. You can repeal them by one enactment, it is no problem," he said.

"But the challenge is not about repealing those laws but the enforcement of existing laws," he said.