There are more than 3 crore cases pending in different courts of India. Many of these cases are pending for more than 10 years. Below are the approximate number of cases pending in Supreme Court, High Courts and District and Subordinate courts in India.

Around 60,000 cases are pending in Supreme Court.

Around 42 lakh cases are pending in different High Courts.

Around 2.7crore cases pending in District and Sub-ordinate Courts

At least five crore cases are filed every year and judges dispose of only two crore. The reasons being –

1. Increase in the awareness of rights by common man

The recent socio-economic advances and the resultant awareness oflegal rights, has given courage to common people toapproach courts of law for justice.New mechanisms (Eg: PIL) and new rights (Eg: RTI)

As government explicit made legislation for new rights like ‘Right to Information’ and ‘Right to Education’, aggrieved parties started to increasingly knock the doors of justice. Also,active judiciary has invented new devices like Public Interest Litigationwhich gave again resulted in more cases.

3. There are not enough judges

There are not enough judges (only around 21,000). Current Judge to Population ratio is 10 to 1 million. The Law Commission report in 1987 recommends atleast 50 to 1 million. Population has increased by over 25 crore since 1987.

The Centre says the States should take the lead in increasing the number of judges and the States say Centre should take the lead. As this tug-of-war goes on, judges’ strength remains the same and litigants remain in jail.

More than half the posts are vacant. There is a conflict between Judiciary and Executive regarding the appointment of Judges to Supreme Court and various High Courts.

Colonial legacies like paid long vacations – at a time when the number of judges is low, the appointed judges are taking long vacations, especially in High Courts.

4. There are not enoughcourts

Indian judiciary has insufficient resources. Both Center and States are not interested in increasing spending with respect to the judiciary.

Budgetary allocations for the whole judiciary are a pathetic 0.1% to 0.4% of the whole budget.

India needs more courts and more benches.

Modernization and computerization have not reached all courts.

5. There is too much litigation from the Government Side

The government is the largest litigant in India, responsible for nearly half the pending cases. Many of them are actually cases of one department of the government suing another, leaving decision-making to the courts. Also, it most of the cases, when government files a case, it is seen that the government side fails to prove the point.

6. Low judicial quality in lower courts

The Indian Judicial system has miserably failed to attract the best brains and the talented students.

As the quality of judges in lower courts is not always up to the mark, appeals are filed against the decisions in higher courts, which again increases the number of cases.