Facing a shortfall of 37 judges, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has an overall pendency of over 6.4 lakh cases.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has 48 judges against the sanctioned strength of 85.
The overall pendency of cases in the High Court stands at 645213 till January 2021 while the pendency was 541520 till January 2020.
According to the data tabled in Parliament, the Allahabad High Court has the highest number of pending cases at 7.71 lakh, followed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
The Himachal High Court has an overall pendency of 74775 cases till January 2021 while the number of pendency cases was 58546 till January 2020. The Himachal High Court has 10 judges against the sanctioned strength of 13.
Notably, a total of 16 out of 25 High Courts in the country have resumed physical hearings which had stopped following the Coronavirus-induced lockdown. Among nine of them, Punjab and Haryana High Court and Himachal High Court are still functioning through virtual hearing only.
Meanwhile, both the High Courts and subordinate judiciary are suffering from a shortage of judicial officers.
As per the official figures, the pendency of cases in district and subordinate courts in Haryana is around 11.26 lakh till January 2021 while it was 8.69 lakh till January 2020. Similarly in Punjab, the pendency is 8.31 lakh cases till January 2021. The pending cases in district and subordinate courts in Punjab was 6.39 lakh cases in January 2020.
In the union territory of Chandigarh, which is the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, there are 59265 pending cases while the number of pending cases was 48262 in January 2020.
In the neighboring hilly state of Himachal, 4.23 lakh cases are pending in district and subordinate courts while the pending cases were 2.90 lakh till January 2020.
The data further showed that a total of 3.71 crore cases are pending in district and subordinate courts in the country while the number of pending cases in High Courts across the country stood at 56 lakh.
While there have been several conferences regarding pendency and exchange of letters between the State Governments and the judiciary in the past few years over the issue, the backlog soars and shortfall of judges remains in place across the country.