The document discusses issues with pendency, disposal times, and case clearance rates in India's lower judiciary. Over 87% of pending cases are in district and subordinate courts, with average pendency over 2 years. Disposal times are also long, taking over 3 years for most civil and criminal cases. Case clearance rates are below 100%, meaning more cases are added than cleared each year. To address these issues, the document recommends increasing the number of judges, improving court administration and technology, and maintaining working days to enhance productivity and efficiency in India's lower courts.

1. Ending Matsyanyaya: How to Ramp
Up Capacity in the Lower Judiciary
CA. Divakar Vijayasarathy
DVS Advisors LLP
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2. Credits and Acknowledgments
Vigneesver P

3. Presentation Schema
INTRODUCTION
WHY PARTICULARLY
LOWER JUDICIARY?
PENDENCY
DISPOSAL TIME
CASE CLEARANCE
RATE
MEASURES TO BE
TAKEN

4. INTRODUCTION
Motive is to bring laws to help the weakest thrive in the society
Ability to enforce contracts and resolve disputes – biggest hindrance to ease of doing business in India
It is noteworthy that India was one of the drastic ‘improver’ in the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) report, 2019
issued by World Bank with its rank moving swiftly from 77 to 142 in the last four years
Introduction of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and the adoption of Goods and Services Tax had
profound impact on improving EODB in India as highlighted in Economic Survey 2018

5. WHY PARTICULARLY LOWER JUDICIARY ?
Around 3.53 Crore cases are pending in the Judicial system
It is imperative to note that 87.54 % of total cases pertain to District
and Subordinate Courts (D&S Courts). Therefore, this segment must
be the focus of reform
As against the conventional belief that the issue is insurmountable, it
is certainly achievable to reach 100% case clearance rate with an
addition of 2,279 judges in the lower courts and 93 in High courts

6. PENDENCY
The pendency of a case on
a given date is the time
since the date of filing
More than 64 per cent of
cases are pending for than
one year
The poorest states in India
are having the highest
average case pendency rate

7. Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat
are having average pendency more than the national
average
Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Punjab have the lowest
average pendency of nearly two years
The distribution of pendency for both civil and
criminal cases is more or less the same
CONTD

8. DISPOSAL TIME
Disposal time is measured as the time span between the date of
filing and the date when the decision is passed
74.7 per cent of the civil cases and 86.5 per cent of the criminal
cases are disposed within three years
The trend of disposal trend is consistent with the distribution of
average pendency age across states.

9. States in eastern India perform poorly although Gujarat too has higher disposal time
the average disposal time for civil and criminal cases in Indian D&S courts in 2018 was 4.4 fold and 6 fold higher
respectively when compared with the average of Council of Europe members (2016)
CONTD

10. CASE CLEARANCE RATE
The Case Clearance Rate (CCR) is the ratio of
the number of cases disposed of in a given year
to the number of cases instituted in that year,
expressed as a percentage
The gap between institution and disposals
allows cases to accumulate and results in an
increase in pendency
This is mainly used to understand the efficiency
of the system in proportion to the inflow of
cases

11. The CCR for civil and criminal cases in India was 94.76 per cent and
87.41 per cent respectively in 2018 while the COE member has
already achieved the CCR above 100 the CCR for civil and criminal
cases in India was 94.76 per cent and 87.41 per cent respectively
in 2018 while the COE member has already achieved the CCR
above 100 per cent
With a CCR below 100 per cent and a heavy backlog of pre-existing
cases, Indian courts suffer from increasing delays USA’s district
courts have better CCR of 98 per cent and 92 per cent for civil
cases and criminal cases respectively
While criminal courts in the UK’s England and Wales court system
perform relatively well, with a clearance rate of roughly 100 per
cent, their civil courts fare poorly in comparison to India, the USA,
and the COE average, with a clearance rate of just 62 per cent
CONTD

12. MEASURES TO BE TAKEN
Indian courts close down for significant periods due to vacations. Increasing the number of working days may
improve productivity of the Supreme Court and in some High Courts, but is unlikely to significantly impact
lower courts. Subordinate courts, which account for the bulk of pendency, seem to work almost as many days
as government offices
For effective functioning, courts require competent administration to ensure that processes are followed,
documents are submitted and stored, facilities are maintained and human resources are managed. Court
administration must support the judges in performing their core judicial function efficiently
Technology can significantly improve the efficiency of courts. One major effort in this direction is the e-Courts
Mission Mode Project that is being rolled out in phases by the Ministry of Law and Justice

13. Thank You
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