New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attacked the Modi government over the vacancy of judges in higher judiciary. Hitting out at law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over huge pendency of cases in courts and shortage of judges, Mr Gandhi twee-ted, “Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases: Supreme Court 55,000+, High Court 37 Lakh+, Lower Courts 2.6 Crore+. Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news,” using the hashtag “Jud-iciaryDemonetised”. 

Mr Gandhi also attacked the Union law minister for spreading fake news. Mr Prasad had earlier accused the Congress of hiring the services of controversial data firm Camb-ridge Analytica, accused of harvesting data stolen from Facebook, in previous elections. The charge has been denied by the Congress, which instead accused the BJP of using the services of the firm.

In another tweet Mr Gandhi took a swipe at the Prime Minister Nar-endra Modi. Mr Gandhi tweeted, “Justice K.M. Joseph, overturned Pre-sident’s rule in Uttara-khand in 2016. When his name was proposed for the Supreme Court, Modiji‘s ego was hurt...”

Rebutting the charge, Mr Prasad tweeted, “Mr Rahul Gandhi maintaining your track record your team has failed you once again by not doing their home work. Average appointment of high court judges in UPA 1 was 86 per year, UPA 2 it was 79 per year. Under the NDA its has been 109 per year.”

Mr Prasad added that pendency in courts is the legacy which UPA government of 10 years had given to the NDA where judicial infrastructure development was the lowest priority. “We are improving the situation by creating more infrastructure, more digitisation and greater technology application in disposal of cases.” Mr Prasad said.