BS Number Wise: Covid has put courts years back in resolving pending cases

Number of pending cases increased at a faster rate during the pandemic, with some high courts falling behind sharply

In the mid-nineteenth century, Courts of Chancery in the United Kingdom were an object of ridicule for their delays and endless proceedings. Novelist Charles Dickens’ book Bleak House, serialised in 1852-53, made a stinging indictment of the chancery system. It imagines a case called Jarndyce vs Jarndyce to mock the complex and tortuously long process of the chancery courts. Twenty years after the novel’s publication, the UK merged the courts of chancery and law. India ended up with a similar system, but it hasn’t made the legal process any faster.

A Business Standard analysis found that, if anything, the pandemic