There are over three crore cases pending across the Supreme Court, the High Courts, and the subordinate courts (including district courts).Of these, the subordinate courts account for over 86% pendency of cases, followed by 13.8% pendency before the 24 High Courts. The remaining 0.2% of cases are pending with the Supreme Court.
Between 2006 and 2018 (up to April), there has been an 8.6% rise in the pendency of cases across all courts. Pendency before Supreme Court increased by 36%, High Courts by 17%, and subordinate courts by 7%.
Reasons for high rate of pendency:
- Lack of capacity infrastructure. According to the Report of Supreme Court of India titled “Subordinate Judiciary-Access to Justice 2016” ; capacity constraints are the main reasons for high level of pendency.
- Vacancy at Judicial officers level.As per the available data, the number of posts sanctioned upto the end of the year 2015, for high courts and subordinate courts were 1018 and 20,620 respectively out of which the total working strength of the judges was 598 and 16,119 respectively
- Prosecution and Investigation department operated by Police are often incompetent to produce evidence in court. This has been corroborated by various committee. The pendency is often seen high in the case of Criminal cases.
- adjournments are granted tooeasily and freely,and in the absence of a fixed time table to dispose of cases leads to delays indisposing the case