HC reopens with pendency of 5 lakh cases

BLURB: Direct fallout of the colossal pendency is long adjournments & lesser number of hearings per year

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Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 1

The Punjab and Haryana High Court reopens this year after a short winter break with a pendency of more than 5 lakh cases, a shortage of 30 judges, a wait that could extend up to almost 50 years and no solution in sight.

National Judicial Data Grid — the monitoring tool to identify, manage and reduce pendency of cases — indicates that 5,28,340 matters are awaiting adjudication in the High Court, of which 3,80,937 cases are more than a year old, 80,026 cases are pending for 10-20 years and 6,729 for 20-30 years.

To make matters worse, the pendency is on the rise as is evident from the fact that the number of matters disposed of is far less than the cases filed. High Court’s own data reveals that 11,860 cases were disposed of against 12,286 filed in November last year.

The direct fallout of the colossal pendency is long adjournments and lesser number of hearings in a year, evident from cases such as one filed by a 97-year-old retired Army officer. When Col Prithipal Singh Gill moved the High Court in 2018 against the Administration, challenging the move to make installation of Solar Photovoltaic Power Plant mandatory for residential and non-residential buildings, nobody could have guessed that the case would come up for hearing only five times in about two years — twice in 2018 and three times last year. The matter was adjourned in October last for this month. The Administration till now has not filed a reply to the contentions raised in the petition.

A suo motu case on foreign prisoners, pending since 2016, could not come up for effective hearing even once last year. It was listed just thrice in 2019. Some cases were adjourned last year for as late as May.

The oldest case, perhaps, is a regular second appeal filed by Rachhpal Singh against Sohan Singh in a land matter. Forty-four years after the appeal pertaining to Gurdaspur area was filed, the case is still pending adjudication.

The appeal in Rachhpal Singh’s case filed way back in 1976 was initially disposed of by the court, but subsequently remanded back by the apex court. The High Court record shows the case came up for hearing only seven times last year and is pending for February.

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To an outsider, the pendency of the case for more than four decades may sound atypical. But it is not exceptional. One regular second appeal filed in 1978, followed by another in 1979 and “thousands” more subsequently are still pending. It is suspected that many petitioners are no more there to pursue their grievances. When some of these cases are suddenly listed, counsels are often at a loss in the absence of complete records or instructions.