The problem of pendency and why judiciary should focus only on it

New Delhi, Oct 18: In the past couple of months, there has been ample talk about judicial activism. The judiciary and the Supreme Court in particular has been criticised for entering into domains it could have avoided.

While there are always two arguments to this, data and statistics reveal that the biggest concern for the judiciary till date remains the pendency of cases. The lower judiciary in particular is burdened with the most number of cases. Out of the 2.78 crore cases pending in the lower judiciary, 22 lakh are over a decade old.

Worrying numbers:

The data available with the National Judicial Data Grid shows that 22,89,565 cases are pending for over 10 years. The number of cases pending between 5 and 10 years is 44,727,56.

The total pending cases stands at 2,78,54,891. Out of this 83,664,474 are civil cases while 1,948,8417 are criminal in nature. In this context let us take a look at the number of cases that have been listed today ie October 18 2018.

Across the country, there are 53,402 civil cases listed today. 13,38,66 cases of criminal nature have also been listed today taking the total count to 1,87,268. The total number of judges hearing the 18 lakh cases today is 19,133.

Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of pending cases at 6810446, followed by Maharashtra at 3495475. Third on the list is Gujarat with 1507637.

Cases disposed:

In the past month alone there were 1214097 cases that had been filed of which 261691 were civil while 952406 were criminal in nature. The number of cases disposed off last month stood at 1324639 of which 308267 were civil cases and 1016372 were criminal in nature.

In the High Courts across the country, there are 4.30 crore cases that are pending while in the case of the Supreme Court it is 55,946.

This huge piling up of cases had prompted the Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi to state that judges should not take off on working days. He also said that if the judges attend seminars and conferences when the court are working, not only does the work get affected, but the study of files for cases the next day too suffers.