New Delhi, Apr 7 (IANS): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday said sanity and logic should not be lost to emotional outbursts and shrill rhetoric.

The prime minister's appeal to maintain sanity and logic was apparently in the context of the "national outrage" in the wake of the Dec 16, 2012 Delhi gang-rape. He was addressing a joint conference here of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts.

Manmohan Singh further said that laws which regulate our daily life should be certain, stable and reasonable.

The prime minister expressed concern over the huge backlog of cases pending in the courts. He said it was incumbent upon state governments to double the number of judicial officers and, correspondingly, augment judicial infrastructure to address the problem.

Also speaking on the occasion, Chief Justice Altmas Kabir pointed to the declining trend in the rate of conviction and faulted investigation for it, saying investigation these days is not what it should be.

Among the proposals likely to be discussed at Sunday's conference, organised by the union law and justice ministry, are the demand for doubling the existing number of district and subordinate courts, filling vacancies in high courts and lower courts, setting up of fast-track courts and improving the infrastructure required to expedite trials. There are over three crore pending cases in various courts in the country.