Over the past few years, the Supreme Court is admitting nearly 5,000 cases fewer annually for hearing. The sharp reduction is on the account of the SC implementing stricter scrutiny of petitions and weeding out the frivolous ones. In 2013, the SC admitted 38,000 cases. The figure come down to 31,500 by May 2018.
This has impacted the pendency figures also. From 67,275 pending cases in May 2013, the number has come down to 54,013 last month.
The reduction has come as a welcome relief to the apex court, which is performing at a reduced strength with seven vacancies. While it is surprising that with an average vacancy of over five judges across the past years, the apex court managed to reduce pendency, a look at the number of admission matters will indicate that judges have been circumspect in admitting cases for hearing.
In 2013, where the new cases stood at 38,099, the figure substantially decreased within a year as in 2014 an average of about 34,000 cases got the nod for hearing. By 2016, there was a slight upward trend in admission of cases (touching 36,105 by December 2016), but again reduced sharply to 32,160 within a year (by November 2017). This trend is visible in the latest statistics put out on the pendency figures on the Supreme Court website showing how the admission cases till May 2018 is at a steady 31,502.
If one takes a mean average of the last five years, it can be seen that each year, the apex court judges heard 4,700 less cases, which works out to be over 390 cases less each month (now that the court is functional even during vacations).
The concern over pendency of cases has been an irritant in the administration of justice system and the trend over the past five years set by the apex court is a combination of the efforts taken to constitute special benches for disposing old matters, batch matters and setting up of vacation benches, even during the winter break in the past few years.
But the judicial system, which includes the 24 High Courts and subordinate courts, is still reeling under the heavy burden of pendency. The High Courts did show a marginal improvement over the past three years with pendency coming down from 41.52 lakh in December 2014 to 38.70 lakh by December 2015 and settling at 40.16 lakh by the end of 2016.
Although subordinate courts failed to create magic with the ever-increasing pendency figures which climbed from 2.64 crore (2014) to 2.74 crore (2016), the consoling factor has been the disposal of cases. According to statistics released by Ministry of law and Justice, the district courts bucked the trend by producing a disposal figure of 1.93 crore in the year 2014 as against 1.92 crore cases admitted. This was possible despite a reduced workforce. The Government had recently informed the lok Sabha about a shortfall of 5,925 judicial officers in the district and subordinate courts.