21K judges struggle to clear 5 crore cases in India

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, December 17

With a strength of less than 21,000 judges, the Indian judiciary is struggling to clear a backlog of more than five crore cases across various levels of the court system, a report prepared by the Supreme Court has revealed.

Pending cases in various courts*

4.4 crore in district and taluka courts

61.7L in High Courts

79,593 in Supreme Court

*On Nov 21, 2023

Citing National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) figures, the report said, “As on November 21, 2023, there is a pendency of 4.4 crore cases in the district and taluka courts, 61.7 lakh in High Courts and 79,593 cases in the Supreme Court. Out of the 4.4 crore cases that are pending in the district and taluka courts, 1.8 crore are pending at the stage of appearance/service.”

Prepared by the Centre for Research and Planning of the Supreme Court of India, ‘State of the judiciary: A report on infrastructure, budgeting, human resources’ was released last month.

“In a population of 139.23 crore citizens in India, there is a pendency of 5.05 crore cases, handled presently by 20,580 judges working at all levels of the judiciary, i.e. the Supreme Court, High Courts and the district judiciary,” it said.

“To ensure speedy and quality delivery of justice, assessing the number of judges needed to cut down the arrears of cases without creating any new backlog is essential. For that purpose, it is necessary to identify the current gap between the sanctioned strength and the working strength of judges. The maximum number of judges that a court can have in office is the sanctioned strength. Working strength is the number of judges in a court at any given time,” it stated.

As against a judge-population ratio of 50 judges per million population recommended by the Law Commission, currently, there are around 14.2 judges per million population in India.

“If this demographic standard is adopted in 2023, India with its present population of around 1,392 million, would need a total of 69,600 judges as against its current sanctioned strength of 25,081 judges to have an optimum judge-to-population ratio and arrive at the target of 50 judges per million population,” the report stated.

After analysing the filing and disposal of cases during 2015-22, the report said, “It is evident that from 2015 to 2022, the pendency of cases (from 2,71,76,029 to 4,32,93,727) saw an increase of 59 per cent while the judge strength in the district judiciary has increased by 22 per cent (from 20,558 to 25,114).”

The report sought to highlight that the problem was much more serious at the district judiciary, which “represents the justice system at the grassroots level” and was “the first point of contact with the public.”

Apart from having adequate number of judges, the report also recommended augmenting judicial infrastructure, modernising trial proceedings through video conferencing, exploring the systemisation of video recording in court proceedings and adopting automated transcription, translation technology and establishing stringent timelines for completion of trial to deal with huge pendency of cases.

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