Pending cases in SC with govt as party increased to 11,414 in 2023: RTI

The number of cases in which government is a party and that are pending in the Supreme Court have increased from 4536 in 2019 to 11,414 in 2023, according to an RTI response from the law ministry.

Replying to the RTI application filed by Pune-based activist Vihar Durve, the ministry said it did not have the data in the form sought by him.

Durve had asked from the ministry "complete information year wise from the year 2019 to 2023" about total cases pending in Supreme Court of India where government of India is one of the party.

As ascertained from the branch concerned, results based on the search of the party name from the list of parties involved in a case i.e. 'UOI', 'U.O.I', 'Union of India', 'U O I', 'State', 'bank', 'Ministry', 'Govt. of India', 'Government of India', 'Govt of India', the number of cases filed from 2019 to 2023 in which government is a party and still pending in Supreme Court are as follows, the ministry said.

Giving the data, it said in the filing year 2019, the number of cases was 4536, in 2020 it was 3341, in 2021 it was 3230, in 2022 it was 6159 and in 2023 it was 11,414.

According to the Supreme Court website on Friday, 79,566 cases are pending before it with 42,548 instituted this year and 41,723 cases disposed this year.

He had also asked total fee paid to "advocates, councilors, legal consultants (who are not in the employment of Government of India or any Government" during 2019-23 to represent government in the Supreme Court.

In its response, the ministry gave details of payments made to law officers, panel counsels and consultants which shows that in 2018-19 Rs 32.81 crore were spent, in 2019-20 it was Rs 37.96 crore, in 2020-21 it was Rs 32.46 crore, in 2021-22 it was Rs 28.78 crore, in 2022-23 it was Rs 31.76 crore while in Rs 2023-23 (till September 12) it was Rs 19.62 crore.