Over 40 lakh cases pending in high courts

Over 40 lakh cases were pending in various high courts, which were facing a shortfall of 265 judges, the government told the Rajya Sabha today.

The government said it was in the process of increasing the strength of judges in the high courts and modernising the infrastructure by introducing information technology to bring down pendency.

A total of 40,76,837 cases were pending at the end of December, 2009 across the 21 high courts, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily informed the upper house in a written reply.

   
Out of the total pending cases, 32,50,291 were civil cases and 8,26,546 criminal cases.
   
In a separate reply, Moily said at the beginning of this year, the high courts were facing a shortage of 265 judges. While the sanctioned strength was 895, the 21 HCs were working with 630 judges.
   
The Allahabad High Court, with a sanctioned strength of 160 judges, was facing a shortage of 82 judges as on January 1, 2010. Out of over 40 lakh cases, 9,50,864 were pending in the Allahabad High Court.
   
The Sikkim High Court had only 85 pending cases.