Answer:

More than 22 million cases are currently pending in India’s district courts. Six million of those have lasted longer than five years. Another 4.5 million are waiting to be heard in the high courts and more than 60,000 in the Supreme Court, according to government data. These figures are increasing according to the decennial reports.

The following causes have been identified for pendency of cases - litigation explosion; inadequacy of the staff attached to the high courts; inordinate concentration of work in the hands of a few members of the Bar; lack of punctuality among judges; inadequate supply of the copies of judgments and orders, and so on.

Despite recognition of these causes, limited progress has been made in reducing pendency of cases due to the following:

♤ The number of judges in the country is inadequate to cope with the staggering pendency of cases in different courts. The rise in the number of cases has not been matched by an increase in the number of judges. There are 10-12 judges per million people in India. In developed countries, there are 50 judges per million people.

♤ However, increasing the number of judges is not the only answer. Some urgent institutional changes are called for. The critical test is not the judge-population ratio but the judge-docket ratio. Docket refers to the list of cases to be tried and is an accurate indication of the work load of a judge. In India, the docket ratio per judge is 987 whereas it is 3,235 per judge in the United States of America. The answer perhaps lies in effective court management, which has not been seriously attempted at by the Indian judiciary. For example, computers have not been used adequately to improve court management.

♤ Even though Section 301 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides for the holding of trial proceedings expeditiously, it is an open secret that there is enormous delay in the disposal of cases because of frequent adjournments.

♤ The glut of cases in the lower courts is where the root of the problem lies. A number of courts still do not have data under the “Date filed” column, the most crucial piece for identifying delays.

♤ The proportion of cases that are stuck pending police investigations has little bearing in the ability of the courts to speedily finish trials. For instance, in Gujarat, where 92 out of every 100 cases are pending before the court, only 11.5% are waiting for police investigations to be completed. On the other hand, in Assam where 80 out of 100 cases are waiting to be picked up the court, about 59% of cases are awaiting police investigations.

♤ Inadequate strength of the police force has also played its part in the pile up of cases before the courts.