Govt asks HCs to undertake fresh pendency reduction drive

Law Minister Salman Khurshid had recently written to the chief justices of the 21 high courts requesting them to undertake a fresh drive to bring down the pendency.

His predecessor M Veerappa Moily had launched the drive during his tenure in the Law Ministry which had shown encouraging results.

In his letter, Khurshid had said that during the latest campaign the focus could be on disposal of cases of the marginalised sections of society.

He pointed out that substantial funds are available with the state governments and these could be utilised for creation of special courts and alternate dispute resolution centres for achieving reduction in pendency.

Khurshid will formally launch this year's drive - planned between July and December - from Karnataka High Court tomorrow.

According to data provided by the various high courts, there has been a net reduction of six lakh cases in subordinate courts at the end of 2011, reversing the earlier trend of increase in pendency by about 5 lakh cases from the end of 2009 to the end of 2010.

There has also been a significant reduction of over 1.36 lakh pending cases relating to senior citizens, minors, disabled and marginalised sections of the society.

The government had recently informed the Rajya Sabha that around 3.2 crore cases were pending in high courts and subordinate courts across the country while 56,383 cases were pending in the Supreme Court.