NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a PIL seeking to fix a three-year outer limit for all courts to clear their cumulative backlog of more than five crore cases, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.
A bench led by CJI D Y Chandrachud told the petitioner that what he was seeking to achieve was very desirable but practically impossible given the flood of litigation faced by each tier of the justice delivery system.
We hear more cases than Western countries: Supreme Court
In Supreme Court of India, the number of cases we hear every day is more than what Western countries’ SCs take up in a year,” the CJI told the petitioner. “That is because our justice system is people-oriented and focuses on every citizen getting easy access to courts. If we adopt the approach of top courts in Western countries, we can clear the backlog in a year and there will be no pendency.”
As of Friday, there are 82,397 cases pending in SC, of which 27,675 are less than a year old. Till date, 48,000 cases have been filed this year and SC had disposed of 46,659 cases in the same period.
The US Supreme Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review every year. According to its rules, four of the nine judges must vote to accept a case. Five of the nine judges must vote to grant a stay, for example, on execution in a death penalty case.
The UK Supreme Court receives around 230 applications for permission to appeal and hears around 90 cases per year. The Indian SC, on Mondays and Fridays, operates 17 benches with each taking up an average 60 cases, which means on these days, it hears over 1,000 cases per day.
In the 25 HCs in India, over 60 lakh cases are pending, of which 4.5 lakh cases are less than a year old. This year, 13.4 lakh new cases have been filed in HCs, which during the same period disposed of 10.7 lakh cases. In trial courts across the country, 4.5 crore cases are pending as on Friday. Last month, as many as 24.7 lakh cases were instituted in trial courts, which during that month disposed of 31.8 lakh cases.