BS Number Wise: Covid has put courts years back in resolving pending cases

Number of pending cases increased at a faster rate during the pandemic, with some high courts falling behind sharply

In the mid-nineteenth century, Courts of Chancery in the United Kingdom were an object of ridicule for their delays and endless proceedings. Novelist Charles Dickens’ book Bleak House, serialised in 1852-53, made a stinging indictment of the chancery system. It imagines a case called Jarndyce vs Jarndyce to mock the complex and tortuously long process of the chancery courts. Twenty years after the novel’s publication, the UK merged the courts of chancery and law. India ended up with a similar system, but it hasn’t made the legal process any faster.

A Business Standard analysis found that, if anything, the pandemic has put Indian courts years back in terms of resolving pending cases. Supreme Court data shows that in the last five years (until March 2022), pendency increased at an annual growth rate of 5 per cent, compared to a dec­line of 3.8 per cent between 2012 and 2017. The number of pending cases before the apex court increased 8 per cent annually between 2019 and 2021.

State high courts and district courts, too, are clogged. In some courts, pendency rose by double digits. At the Allahabad High Court, the number of cases pending for over 10 years increased by 20 per cent. In 2019, nearly 355,000 cases at the Allahabad High Court were pending for over a decade. The number increased to 401,000 in 2022 (until May).

A major reason for this snail-paced legal process is that Indian courts operate with 60 per cent, or less, of judges needed. The high courts have a sanctioned strength of 1,098 judges, but only 644 positions were filled up until last year. Data reveals that vacancies were higher than the working strength in five states: Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana.

Out of the sanctioned strength of 61,389 for support staff in high courts, 73 per cent or 44,925 positions were occupied in 2021. In Andhra Pradesh, 35 per cent of support staff positions were filled. In Bihar, the ratio was 47 per cent.

India’s e-courts project is also crawling along. The government allocated just Rs 41 crore in this year’s Budget to the National Mission for Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms, which also entails digitisation of existing courts. Last year, the mission received Rs 139 crore. In 2020-21, Rs 213 crore was spent on the mission.

Although a Bleak House-styled criticism of India’s system is not available, the number of undertrials languishing in prisons is an indictment of the judicial process itself.