Pending cases

By Vijay Kumar

The number of pending court cases in the subordinate courts across the country at present is over two crore twenty lakh. In the 21 high courts the number of pending cases is thirty-five lakh. The Supreme Court has thirty-two thousand cases to dispose of. In India there are 13 judges for every ten lakh people. The information is furnished by the Government.

At this rate the only way to clear all the cases is to hand them over to the Indian Army – you really need an army to clear the 2,5 Crores pending cases. While High Courts are struggling with so many cases and so few judges, there is a proliferation of appellate commissioners in the Customs and Central Excise department. In Hyderabad there are three Commissioners (Appeals) for about thirty pending cases. The amount of work the High Court judges do is mind boggling. Sometime back I had gone to the house of a High Court Chief Justice (to request for an article for TIOL). I was given appointment at 7 pm. When I met him at 7 pm, the CJ was busy dictating orders and he was in the Court till 5.30 pm!

The Revenue Boards have created more than three hundred posts of Commissioners in the last cadre review. Instead of this, had we appointed 150 additional judges in the High Courts, the pending cases would have been cleared by this time.