Not only in the Odisha High Court, pending cases are mounting in the district and subordinate courts in the State too due to insufficient numbers of judges.
According to statistics available, more than 12 lakh cases are now pending disposal in all the District and Sessions Judge Courts, civil judge courts (including Gram Nyayalayas) and special judicial magistrate courts. It is not out of place to mention here that more than 3.5 lakh cases are pending in the High Court, which is having only 15 judges, including the Chief Justice, against a sanctioned strength of 22. Notwithstanding the above vacancies in the High Court, the district and subordinate courts are now also having a vacancy of 88 judicial officers in different cadres.
While against a sanctioned strength of 156, there are only 110 district judge cadre officers in the State. Similarly, against a sanctioned strength of 191 senior civil judges, there are 180 of them, leaving a vacancy of 11 judicial officers in this cadre.
Till June this year, as many as 23 civil judge posts were lying vacant, and against a sanctioned strength of 18 special judicial magistrates, there are only 10 officers managing the jobs. These vacancies are creating a herculean task for the judicial officers to dispose of the cases.
The statistics further reveal that till June this year, about 1,13,954 civil suits, 9,761 civil appeals, 4,350 civil miscellaneous appeals and 298 civil revision cases were pending across the State.
While Khurda district has the maximum cases pending, Malkanagiri has the lowest number of cases pending in that district. It is also revealed that about 19,329 execution proceedings are pending disposal in all the 30 districts of the State, about 56,711 cases pertaining to provisions of special Acts are pending.
A whopping 31,168 Motor Accident Claim Tribunal (MACT) cases and 17,286 session cases are also pending in different courts of the State.
It is about 9,36,077 criminal cases are pending disposal in all the magisterial courts of the State. Of these, trial has not begun yet in 7,25,331 cases and the remaining 2,10,746 are now pending disposal in trial stage.