New Delhi: The judiciary in India, including the lower courts, have disposed over 2 crore cases in 2014, while they still face a backlog of over three crore cases, the Lok Sabha has been informed.
Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda said in a written reply that the subordinate courts settled 1,9019,658 cases in 2014, but their backlog still consists of 2.64 crore cases. Similarly, the 24 High Courts disposed 17,34,542 cases in 2014. The pendency in the High Courts was estimated at 41.53 lakh at the end of December, 2014.
The Supreme Court disposed of 44,090 cases this year till December one, while the pendency there has been estimated at 58,906 till the beginning of this month.
The apex court has informed that these figures have been calculated taking on the cases disposed main or connected and not inter-locating applications while treating hyphenated applications as a single matter, Gowda said.
He said some of the main factors responsible for pendency of cases in courts are increasing number of state and central legislations, accumulation of first appeals and continuation of ordinary civil jurisdiction in some of the High Courts.
The other factors include vacancies of judges, appeals against orders of quasi-judicial forums going to High Courts, frequent adjournments and lack of adequate arrangement to monitor, track and bunch cases for hearing.
"The government has adopted a coordinated approach to assist judiciary for phased liquidation of arrears and pendency in judicial system, which involves better infrastructure for courts including computerisation, increase in strength of judicial officers and judges, policy and legislative measures in the areas prone to excessive litigation and emphasis on human resource development.
"As a result of concerted efforts, the trend of increasing pendency of cases in the subordinate courts has been checked," he said.
