The Pendency Project

A research paper published today has analysed nearly 60 years of cases pending in the Supreme Court and revealed a host of trends, including that litigation in states geographically nearer to Delhi is more likely to end up in the apex court, that the longest pendency plagues company, tax, mining and public interest litigations.

Exclusive: Over the summer holidays the cases pending at the Supreme Court has shot up by around 3,000 cases, with 2,000 pending cases added in the month of July alone when just over 500 cases were disposed of – a record since the start of Legally India’s Pendency Project in May 2011. It’s not looking good.

When Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia started his term in May 2010 it was widely reported that he didn’t take the traditional May-June court vacation but worked through it, aiming to look at ways of reducing the time it takes to hear cases and making the Supreme Court administration more efficient.

The pendency of cases at the Supreme Court of India is within a whisker of 60,000 – a new record - after rising by more than 700 cases in March 2012.

Pendency at the Supreme Court of India has crossed 59,000 cases for the first time ever, with numbers up 8 per cent on May 2011 figures, two judges having already retired this year to date and four more due to leave.

As expected after the winter court holidays, 2011’s Supreme Court case pendency closed with a spike, which could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the project to reduce pending cases by the end of this financial year.

Legally India’s Pendency Project has made its debut in Mint today, after pending Supreme Court cases in November 2011 reached the highest number ever after increasing by more than 800.

Mint has summarised the revolutionary case pendency stats prepared by the Supreme Court in a concise chart, while Legally India asked two academics researching case pendency for comment on Kapadia’s Law Day speech and the new figures.

More than two thirds of cases pending in the Supreme Court – nearly 40,000 – were stuck not because of judges but due to procedural delays, including unpaid fees, unserved notice or documents not filed by counsel, according to detailed data released for the first time by the court as a result of its exercise in cataloguing court delays.

The Supreme Court saw the backlog of cases increase by another 80 in a slow holiday-ridden October where almost 3,000 fewer cases were filed than in the previous month. However, in more positive news the apex court has managed to continue its now four-month record of getting cases older than one year off its books.

Bad news: in September 2011 the Supreme Court booked an apparent net deficit of more than 1,000 cases in its monthly pendency clearance efforts. If this rate were kept up, pending cases could double in less than five years.

Click on through for a detailed analysis of the Supreme Court’s performance in clearing its backlog in August 2011.

Exclusive: Click through for more stats, data and an explanation of The Pendency Project.