Reasons for Judicial Pendency

♤ Shortage of judges - India has only 17 judges per million population and nearly 5000 posts in subordinate courts are vacant. In contrast, US has 151 and China has 170 judges for a million population.

o The Law Commission in 1987 had proposed 50 judges per million population.

o Around 5,580 or 25% of posts are lying empty in the sub-ordinate courts..

♤ Impasses over appointments of judges: Memorandum of Procedures for appointment of judges remains work in progress while vacancies in various High Courts have reached nearly 50% of their sanctioned strength.

♤ Huge workload: Judges in high courts hear between 20 and 150 cases every day, or an average of 70 hearings daily. The average time that the judges have for each hearing could be as little as 2 minutes.

♤ Government the biggest litigant: 46% of all litigation across courts were cases or appeals filed by state or central governments.

♤ Increasing admission of SLP- The Special Leave Petition cases in the Supreme Court, currently comprises to 40% of the court’s pendency. Which eventually leads to reduced time for the cases related to constitutional issues.

♤ Frequent adjournments- The laid down procedure of allowing a maximum of three adjournments per case is not followed in over 50 per cent of the matters being heard by courts, leading to rising pendency of cases.

♤ Judges Vacation- SC works on average for 188 days a year, while apex court rules specify minimum of 225 days of work. Recently, at least 15 judges of the Supreme Court decided that they will be sitting in the forthcoming summer vacation to deal with three cases of Constitutional importance.

♤ Low budgetary allocation leading to poor infrastructure- India spends only about 0.09% of its GDP to maintain the judicial infrastructure. Infrastructure status of lower courts of the country is miserably grim due to which they fail to deliver quality judgements.

o A 2016 report published by the Supreme Court showed that existing infrastructure could accommodate only 15,540 judicial officers against the all-India sanctioned strength of 20,558.

♤ Lack of court management systems- Courts have created dedicated posts for court managers to help improve court operations, optimize case movement and judicial time. However only few courts have filled up such posts so far.

♤ Not utilizing the court managers potential: Courts have created dedicated posts for court managers to help improve court operations, optimize case movement and judicial time. But more often their duties are restricted to organizing court events and running errands.

♤ Inefficient investigation-Police lacks training for scientific collection of evidences and also police and prison official often fail to fulfil their duty leading to long delays in trial.

♤ Increasing legal literacy- With people becoming more aware of their rights and the obligations of the State towards them, they approach the courts more frequently in case of any violation.