A view of Supreme Court of India, in New Delhi. File.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Ever since the appointment of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud as the top judge on November 9, 2022, the Supreme Court has managed to keep its judicial vacancies to the minimum.
Except for a brief delay between December 13, 2022 and January 31, 2023, appointment of judges to the top court has proceeded relatively smoothly. For the most part of 2023 and the current year, the court has functioned with its full sanctioned strength of 34 judges.
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Yet, the National Judicial Data Grid figures on August 31 show a record high of 82,887 pending cases. Chief Justice Chandrachud had inherited a backlog of 69,647 cases in November 2022 when he took over as the top judge. The pendency by the end of 2023 was a little over 80,000 cases.
The unceasing increase in backlog over the past two years raises the question whether a solution to pendency lies beyond maintaining the full sanctioned judicial strength of 34 judges.
Several resolutions of the Supreme Court Collegium led by Chief Justice Chandrachud in the past two years have explicitly voiced concern about the “huge workload”.
For example, a November 2023 resolution points out that the “Supreme Court has a huge backlog of cases”.
The resolution stressed that the top court cannot afford even one vacancy taking into account the “ever mounting pendency of cases”.
“The workload of judges has increased considerably. Bearing in mind the above, it has become necessary to ensure that the court has full working judge-strength leaving no vacancy at any point of time,” the Collegium had underscored.
The same sense of urgency was conveyed in the January 19, 2024 resolution of the Supreme Court Collegium. Here, the Collegium appreciated the Supreme Court for an “unprecedented rate of disposal” of 52,191 cases in 2023. It said the court could achieve this distinction owing to the fact that it had operated “almost throughout last year” with 34 judges.
But, again, the Collegium repeats the refrain of the November 2023 resolution that the “workload of judges has increased considerably and it has become necessary to ensure that the court has full working judge-strength at all times”.
The pendency of over 82,000 stares in the face even though the Supreme Court’s monthly disposal rate is more than the number of cases instituted.
A total of 5,948 criminal and civil cases were instituted while 6,710 cases were disposed of last month alone. The court instituted 39,473 new cases and disposed of 37,580, which is 95.2% of the rate of new cases filed, so far this year.
The court has 218 matters pending before its various three-judge Benches, 35 in front of five-judge Benches, seven before seven-judge Benches and another before nine-judges Benches. These figures pertain to the main matters and not to petitions connected to these main matters.
The Supreme Court has already, on the judicial side, flagged the “urgent need to take proactive steps to not only clear the huge backlog of cases at all levels”.
