33 million cases pile up in Indian courts

With over 33 million pending cases piled up in the Indian courts, the Narendra Modi-led government has finally instructed the Union Ministry of Law and Justice to “find out a way for reducing delays and arrears” in the country’s justice system. The government has also asked the Law Ministry to initiate structural changes in the existing set up to reduce the unprecedented pendency of cases, especially in the subordinate courts at the district level, where over 28 million cases have remained unresolved for years.

The letter by G.R. Raghvender, Joint Secretary in the Department of Justice, said that “re-engineering of court procedure for quick disposal of cases” is one such idea which can reduce the burden on the judiciary. Another idea is to provide better infrastructure to district and lower courts and increasing the strength of the subordinate judiciary.

The central government is also contemplating setting performance standards, which can be an effective measure to enhance accountability in the judicial system. In June 2019, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi had written to the Prime Minister about the issue of acute pendency of cases in the Supreme Court and high courts. The CJI had suggested an increase in the strength of judges and raising the retirement age of high court judges to 65 years, on par with their colleagues in the apex court.

In his letter to the Prime Minister, CJI Gogoi had also stated that one of the prime reasons “why the higher judiciary is not being able to contain the ever-growing pendency is the shortage of high court judges wherein 37% of the sanctioned strength was lying vacant.”

Sources said that concerned with the problem of pendency of cases, Modi had asked Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to take appropriate steps to address the issue.

Data reveals that more than 4.3 million cases are reportedly pending in the high courts while, in the Supreme Court, the figure has touched almost 60,000.

By and large, the burden of pendency of cases has mainly affected the poorer citizen of the country. In civil disputes, the situation is worse, with a large number of cases pending for well over 30 years. Another area of concern is over the population of jails, where several thousands of undertrials are awaiting trial for years.

As far as the situation in the states are concerned, Uttar Pradesh is the worst hit, with the pendency of over 6.1 million cases, followed by Maharashtra (3.32 million), West Bengal (1.76 million), Bihar (1.66 million) and Gujarat (1.65 million). Gujarat and Maharashtra also have the highest number of civil cases pending in the subordinate courts.