Peaking over 88,000 circumstances, pendency continues to plague Supreme Court

The pendency within the Supreme Court has reached an all-time excessive lately of 88,417 circumstances, that too when the court docket is presently functioning with its full sanctioned judicial energy of 34 judges.

The court docket has 69,553 civil circumstances and 18,864 prison issues pending presently, the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) confirmed. The submitting of recent circumstances in August surpassed the disposal price. A complete of seven,080 circumstances have been instituted within the apex court docket in August alone. The court docket has managed a disposal price of 5,667 circumstances in August, that’s, 80.04% of the circumstances filed.

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The escalation in pendency is regardless of Chief Justice B.R. Gavai’s resolution to have extra Benches working by the lengthy summer season recess of the court docket in a bid to lower the caselog.

The CJI had re-named the summer season holidays from May 23 to July this 12 months as ‘partial working days’. The CJI and 5 senior most judges of the court docket had presided over the primary batch of Benches listening to circumstances in the course of the summer season recess. A complete of 21 Benches sat in batches all through the ‘partial working days’, listening to and disposing of circumstances, until the court docket re-opened in July.

In 2025, 52,630 circumstances have been filed whereas 46,309, almost 88%, have been disposed of throughout a 12 months which has already seen two Chief Justices of India with a 3rd, Justice Surya Kant, anticipated to be sworn in in late November 2025.

The identical time final 12 months, 2024, had seen an analogous climb in pendency to a then peak of over 82,000 circumstances. The improve in pendency within the court docket persists regardless of successive Chief Justices, from Justice D.Y. Chandrachud to Justice Gavai taking care to keep up judicial emptiness within the prime court docket to the minimal, if not zero.

The unceasing improve in backlog has grow to be a perennial phenomenon because the pandemic years, and particularly since 2023. The pendency had continued to rise steadily regardless of Justice Chandrachud, when he was CJI, performing swiftly to refill vacancies within the prime court docket. His successors to the highest choose submit, Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Gavai, have additionally spearheaded their very own Collegium to promptly suggest names of apex court docket judges to the federal government.

Past Chief Justices and even Collegium resolutions have raised the problem of “large workload”. A November 2023 Collegium decision had talked about the naked fact that the court docket can not afford even one emptiness bearing in mind the “ever mounting pendency of circumstances”.

“The workload of judges has elevated significantly. Bearing in thoughts the above, it has grow to be crucial to make sure that the court docket has full working judge-strength leaving no emptiness at any level of time,” the Collegium had underscored.

The current months have seen the federal government approve Collegium suggestions to the Supreme Court immediately, typically inside 48 hours. Yet, the mound of backlog continues to rise steadily.