Nearly 3 crore cases pending in courts, 2.6 cr in lower courts alone

Team Herald

NEW DELHI: Almost 3 crore cases were pending in various higher and lower courts in India at the end of 2017 even while Minister of State for Law P P Chaudhary claims “the Central Government is fully committed to speedy disposal of cases in accordance with Article 21 of the Constitution.”

He gave out statistics of this justice delayed and hence justice denied, based on the web portal of the National Judicial Data Grid, showing that not less than 2.5% population of the country is victim of the inordinate delay in dispensing the justice. 

The grid developed as e-Courts drive in the mission mode provides updated information of civil and criminal cases as also pending cases in the computerised district and subordinate courts in the country.

One reason for the pile-up of the pending cases is that almost 40% posts of the judges are lying vacant in the High Courts while the vacancies not filled up in the district and subordinate courts are 26.38%.

Even the Supreme Court is no exception where only 25 judges are functioning as against the sanctioned strength of 31. Nine posts of the chief justices of the High Courts are also lying vacant, their responsibilities met by the acting chief justices. The cases pending in the Supreme Court swell to 54,714 as on December 18 when it went on the winter recess.

In two separate written replies to advocate Vivek K Tankha of the Congress and D Raja of the CPI in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, the minister said 2.60 crore cases were pending in the district and subordinate courts as on December 26, excluding the data of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Puducherry and Lakshadweep, while 34.27 lakh cases were pending in the High Court on this date with data from the Allahabad and J&K High Courts not available.

The Allahabad High Court, which has the highest approved strength of 160 judges, also tops in terms of 51 vacancies as on December 26, followed by the Calcutta High Court having 39 vacancies of the judges as against the sanctioned strength of 72.

The vacancies in some other High Courts are: Bombay High Court 24 out of sanctioned 94 judges, Karnataka High Court 37 out of sanctioned 65, Punjab and Haryana igh Court 35 out of sanctioned 85, Madhya Pradesh 19 out of sanctioned 53, Delhi 23 out of sanctioned 60 and Rajasthan 15 out of 50 sanctioned posts.