85,907 cases, filed between 1952 and 1990, are stuck at the lowest levels of judiciary.
New Delhi: In what brings out the prolonged wait for verdicts in many cases in India, two civil cases that were filed in 1952, are still being heard at the district level.Both of them are being heard at the level of senior judge, Malda, West Bengal. While one of them, a partition suit, was filed on 4 April 1952 (Jabendra Narayan ChoudharyvsAshok Choudhary), the other one (Pravati Roy v/s Bipracharan Sarkar) was filed on 18 July 1952.
Similarly, there are 988 cases that are pending in various lower courts of India that were filed between 1953 and 1970. This includes two cases filed in 1953, one in 1954, three in 1995, two in 1956, five in 1957, 16 in 1958, 11 in 1959 and 12 in 1960.
There are 84,919 cases filed 1971 and 1990 that are still undecided and are being heard at the lower court level. In all, there are 85,907 cases, filed between the 38 years’ time period between 1952 and 1990that are stuck at the lowest levels of judiciary.
The situation at the High Court level, too, is not encouraging.
There are, as of today, 7,503 criminal and civil cases that are pending across the various High Courts of India which were filed more than 30 years ago, in 1992 or before. Of this, 4,482 of them are pending with the Allahabad High court.
Allahabad is followed by the Calcutta High Court where 781 civil cases that were filed 30 years or before are still being heard. The two southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh come in third and fourth position. In all, 571 and 392 cases are respectively being heard in these two High courts for the past 30 years.
Following in close is the Bombay High Court with 304 pending cases, Madras High Court with 216 cases, Patna High Court with 198 cases and Orissa High Court with 142 cases that are going on for the last 30 years or more.
The best performing courts as far as disposing of long pending cases include the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, High Court of Madhya Pradesh (one case each), High Court of Kerala (5 cases), High Court of Karnataka (6 cases), High Court of Gujarat (12 cases) and the High Court of Jharkhand with 35 cases that were filed more than 30 years ago still being heard.
In all 4.18 crore, out of which more than 75% are more than one-year-old, are pending across the various lower courts of India.
In the High Court, 59.45 cases are pending, out of which 84% are more than one year old.In December 2021, the Union government had stated that 5133 posts in lower judiciary across India were vacant. Similarly, as on 7 February 2022, against the sanctioned strength of 1,098 judges in the High Courts, only 687 judges were in position.