At 5 minutes per case, Delhi high court clears 94,000 in 2 years

Abhinav Garg, TNN May 30, 2012

NEW DELHI: It's a trade-off between the time spent on hearing each case and the mounting arrears. So, having devoted just over five minutes on an average on each case, the Delhi high court disposed of up to 94,000 cases in 2008-10- more than the fresh cases filed in these two years.

This trend has emerged from the high court's biennial report for 2008-10, released on Tuesday. It shows that a bench spends over five minutes on an average on each case which costs the exchequer Rs 14,658 per minute of court time. Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri called it "the report card of the high court", adding, "public confidence in our courts is essential to the administration of justice".

Tuesday's report comes nearly three years after the release of the 2006-08 report when then Chief Justice A P Shah had admitted the court was so much up to its neck in arrears that it would take 466 years to clear the gigantic backlog. An attempt to work towards reducing pendency is evident from the latest biennial report that says the 2008-10 period saw a significant reduction in arrears. It also points out the first attempt to define what constitutes arrears - one year for a writ petition and five years for suits.

The number of cases assigned to each bench rose from 11,573 cases in 2008-09 to 12,276 cases in 2009-10 , while the average number of cases that landed before every bench daily went up from 57 to 59 in the same timeframe. The report also shows that while the court is handling almost 1.5 lakh cases per year, it has managed to bring down the backlog from 74,749 main cases as on April 01, 2008, to 60,709 by 31 March 2010.

Sikri added, "Publication of such reports is a significant step in our ongoing effort to improve public trust and confidence."

Giving a detailed analysis of pendency , the report shows a fall of 3.7% for 2008-09 and 1.16% for 2009-10 . This was largely because the high court disposed of nearly 50,000 cases even as pending cases in 2008-09 numbered 66,529, in addition to the 41,448 fresh cases filed. In 2009-10 , the pendency was 60,709 cases, in addition to 37,345 fresh cases. A bench strength of 43 judges managed to dispose of 44,000 cases.

In a first, the report makes a comparative analysis of statistics on filing disposal and pendency of main cases for between 2004 and 2010 that saw pendency fall from 71,122 in 2004 to 60,709 in 2010.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-05-30/delhi/31899492_1_pendency-fresh-cases-bench