 "Twenty million cases still pending: In India’s district courts, a crisis is revealed")
By Shobhit Mathur and Nomesh Bolia As of today, there are more than 20 million cases pending in the Indian districts courts; two-thirds are criminal cases and one in 10 have been pending for more than 10 years, our analysis of National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG[1]) data has revealed. More revelations:
- There is one judge for every 73,000 people in India, seven times worse than the United States. - On an average, 1,350 cases are pending with each judge, who clears 43 cases per month. - At the rate cases are handled at the district courts, civil cases will never get cleared, and it will take more than 30 years to clear criminal cases.
This is a looming crisis, and understanding where the problem lies is key to finding a solution. Delhi has India’s worst people-to-judge ratio, other small states twice better than national average Delhi stands out for having the worst population-to-judge ratio. While the national average is 73,000 people to a judge, Delhi is almost seven times worse with about 500,000 people to a judge. At the other end, smaller states and union territories (UTs) such as Chandigarh, Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh have at least twice as many judges per person, compared to the national average. [caption id=“attachment_2712910” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]
representational image. CNN IBN[/caption] Let us next look at the case burden on judges in each state. As expected, smaller states which have a better population-per-judge ratio perform better and the bigger states are worse off. Uttar Pradesh (UP) stands out as the state with the maximum case burden on each judge, with about 2,500 cases pending per judge. That is almost twice the national average of 1,350 cases per judge. Sikkim and Mizoram are the best performing states with 71 and 118 pending cases per judge respectively. States with fewer judges and higher burdens have most cases pending for more than a decade Does the burden on judges translate to judicial delays? We have mixed results. Smaller states and UTs such as Haryana, Sikkim, Chandigarh, Punjab, Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh have less than 1 per cent of cases pending more than 10 years. Among states with the worst ratio, Gujarat heads the list with about one in 4 cases delayed more than 10 years. There is a correlation between the case burden on judges and population per judge. Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal, which have a higher burden and higher population per judge, also have a higher ratio of cases pending more than 10 years.
- Delhi and Orissa have the worst rating with four red and 0 green. Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are next states with a poor rating. Of these, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh may get better in coming years because they are clearing pending cases faster. - Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim score high (three green and one red). The district judicial systems of these states need to be studied and best practices replicated in other states. However, they are piling pending cases each month. - We can predict the states that will soon face a crisis. For example, states like Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Maharashtra, which are accumulating pending cases each month, will soon be in the red on parameters of pending cases per judge and cases pending for more than 10 years. - On the positive side, states such as Karnataka and Kerala, which are clearing pending cases every month, will soon reduce the number of pending cases per judge.
It is well known that India’s judicial infrastructure is crippled. This analysis helps us understand where the problems lie. Our analysis reveals where to invest on judicial infrastructure, fill vacancies for judges and provides the evidence needed for urgent reforms and target the reforms at the right areas. (Mathur, an IIT-B alumnus and MBA from the Indian School of Business, is the Executive Director, Vision India Foundation, which focuses on policy research, training and engagement of young talent in public policy and governance. Bolia is an IIT-B alumnus and an associate professor at IIT Delhi. His research focuses on data- driven governance) [1]The NJDG does not have data for the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland, so they have been left out from the analysis. NJDG considers Chandigarh as a state. The data snapshot from NJDG was taken on 18 February, 2016 and the trends have been analysed based on that. Since NJDG does not provide historical data, the analysis is limited by the data collected on the given date. The population statistics were taken from the Census 2011 and since the state of Telangana did not exist in 2011, the analysis for population per judge has not been done for Telangana.
