Pendency statistics improve in high courts, but still early to celebrate

Over a fifth of cases in HCs pending for over a decade. Kolkata High Court worst performing with 47% cases pending for over 10 years

Earlier this week, the SC recommended remission for a murder convict in jail for 16 years. However, unbeknownst to the apex court, the applicant had died last year in September. 

A month ago, former CJI and now Rajya Sabha MP, Ranjan Gogoi, had castigated the judicial system for endless delays. The former CJI had said that “if you go to Court, you don’t get a verdict, all you do is wash your dirty linen".

While given the pendency — there are over 35 million cases pending in various courts — CJI’s comments may seem true, data analysis shows that pendency in high courts has been coming down. 

While high courts across the country had 25% cases pending for over a decade just a few years ago, an analysis of data from the National Judicial Data Grid shows that, overall, 25 HCs have just 21% cases pending for over a decade now. 

However, it is still too early to celebrate, a state-wise analysis shows that HCs with higher case burden are also the ones with a higher rate of pendencies. For instance, Kolkata HC, which accounts for 5% of total cases in the country, has 47% cases pending for over a decade. Allahabad HC, which accounts for 13.7% of the country’s total case burden in HCs, has 39% cases pending for over a decade now.

In fact, the top-five courts have, on average, a third of their cases pending for over a decade now. Data also indicates that more cases are piling up in the docket. While the Punjab and Haryana HC added 10,408 cases in the last month, it did not dispose of a single case during this period. Similarly, Allahabad HC added 26,156 cases in the last month, but it disposed of only 16,880, leaving a net addition of 9,276 cases. 

Not all courts are similar though, Karnataka HC for instances disposed of more cases (8,130) than it added in the last month (3,087), and thus had a better clearance rate than others. 

Moreover, analysis shows that smaller courts are better off in disposing of cases. Tripura and Meghalaya, for instance, have not a single case pending for over a decade and have only 7.4% of cases pending for 5-10 years. Sikkim has just 0.4% of cases pending for more than a decade. Himachal Pradesh has 3.1% of cases pending for over a decade. 

While a large part of pendency has to do with the shortage of judges (HCs have a 40% vacancy) courts are also short of non-judicial staff.