Over 2 crore cases pending in lower courts, 10 per cent older than 10 years

Union law and justice ministry statistics have revealed that over two crore cases are pending in the country’s lower judiciary, out of which more than 10 per cent have remained unsettled for over 10 years.

The National Judicial Data Grid website as on December 31, 2015, stated that there are a total of 2,00,60,998 cases pending across the district courts in different states. Of these, 83,00,462 or 41.38 per cent cases are pending for less than two years. At the same time, 21,72,411 or 10.83 per cent cases are pending for over 10 years, a note prepared by the department of justice for a high-level meeting on Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms says. A meeting is expected to take place next week for suggesting ways to bring down pendence of cases. The note clarifies that it does not cover all courts across the country, therefore, the department of justice periodically collects the data on pendency of cases from the 24 high courts and the SC. The data states that 36,30,282 or 18.1 per cent of the cases are pending for the last five to 10 years. The number of cases pending between two and five years stands at 59,83,862 or 29.83 per cent of the total cases. Law and justice minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda had informed the Lok Sabha in December that the subordinate courts settled 1,9019,658 cases in 2014. He had said that the 24 high courts disposed of 17,34,542 cases in 2014. The pendency in the high courts was estimated at 41.53 lakh at the end of December 2014.

The SC disposed of 44,090 cases till December 1, while the pendency there has been estimated at 58,906 till the beginning of December 2015.

Regarding the pending cases, the department of justice says that one of the biggest problems facing policy-makers in this field is the “lack of any benchmark” to determine when a case should be considered delayed. “For example, if a case is not disposed of within a year of it being instituted, will it be considered to be delayed The lack of a clear criterion to determine what constitutes delay poses a hurdle to determine the policy changes needed to address the issue,” the note reads.

Usual attempts to reduce pendency include increasing the number of judges or creating additional benches, and while there is no disagreement that the number of judges does need to be increased, this cannot be the only measure to reduce the pendency, it says.