In this presentation, we go through some reasons on why pending cases take so long to get a verdict in Indian courts.

1. Siva Prasad Bose
Delays of justice in Indian
courts

2. The problem of slow disposal of court cases
• As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied.
• Cases pending for a long time lead to unnecessary
stress and unnecessary costs in litigants, and may result
in denial of justice altogether.
• Therefore, this delay of resolution is a problem that
urgently needs tacking.
0 1000000 2000000 3000000 4000000
0-20 years
20-30 years
>30 years
Number of cases with time taken to
resolve

3. Reason 1: Too many pending cases
• There are too many pending
cases in Indian courts
• Supreme Court has 60000
pending cases
• High courts have 5750000
pending cases
• Lower courts have 38000000
pending cases
• This huge number of pending
cases clogs the court system
0
5000000
10000000
15000000
20000000
25000000
30000000
35000000
40000000
Supreme Court High courts Lower Courts
Approx. number of pending cases in Indian
courts

4. Reason 2: Too few judges
• India has less than 17000
judges in total, with 17 judges
per million of the population,
which is probably the lowest
judge to population ratio in the
world.
• The ideal number should be
around 60000 judges for the 50
judges per million ratio, as per
the findings of the law
commission of India.
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000
Current number
Desired number
Total number of judges in different courts

5. Reason 3: Delays in recruitment of judges
• New judicial recruitments are also not being done soon enough.
• The government is also not doing enough to recruit the needed increased number of judges.
• There is a high bar on recruitment of judges and also on recruitment of judges to higher
courts such as high court and supreme court.
• Even today, thousands of vacancies (up to one third of the sanctioned strength, which itself is
low) are lying unfilled.
• The budget allocated by the government for the judiciary infrastructure is too low as well.

6. Reason 4: Delays by police and other government
agencies
• Police often refuse to file FIRs in the case of many complaints by
the public, or refuse to investigate properly on time.
• Doing this, investigating and taking action speedily by the police,
could have led to speedy disposal in the earliest stages of the cases
and led to them not having to come to the courts, reducing the
burden on the justice system.
• Why do the police not take speedy action? It could be due to a
number of factors such as
• lethargy or corruption, where some of the parties are well
connected politically.
• inaction by other government agencies as well.
• The police may be more hesitant to take action if the
complainants are poor, not connected, or from rural areas.

7. Reason 5: Delays due to litigants
• Sometimes litigants can delay the cases as well. For example, if one party are illegally
occupying the other party's property, they may want the justice to be delayed in order to
keep staying on the property.
• The litigants can delay cases in a number of ways such as the following:
• Not being present in court dates
• Inserting unnecessary applications to divert the court’s attention
• Asking for adjournments
• Requesting information from banks or other government agencies
• Delays in execution even after an order has been given
• Unnecessary appeals

8. Solution: How to speed up cases
• Increase the recruitment of judges
• Increase the number of virtual hearings in all courts
including lower courts
• Make sure the police and other agencies do their job
speedily
• Increase the budget allocation from the government
• Improve the quality of judges by better training