More than 400 constitutional matters pending before SC

At least 435 constitutional cases are pending in the Supreme court which includes 46 main matters and 389 connected matters.

New Delhi:Atotal of 435 constitutional cases are pending in the Supreme court before five-judge, seven-judge and nine-judge bench as on 1st September 2020. In the preceding two months also the figure stood 435 which means that none of the cases was disposed of.

435 cases include 46 main matters and 389 connected matters. Constitutional matters are the cases which involve interpretation of constitution or rules by the court in case of conflict.

There are a total of 286 cases pending before the 5-judge bench, 13 cases before the 7-judge bench and 135 cases before the 9-judge bench.

The total number of cases, i.e including constitutional and other categories of cases, stands at 62,054. Out of these, 12,461 are such cases which can not be listed before the court for hearing. 12,381 are incomplete miscellaneous matters and 80 are not ready regular hearing matters. They both can not be heard by the court as preliminaries like court fee, notice not served etc are yet to be completed.

According to some legal experts, the virtual hearing has also led to an increase in pendency of cases. Apex court has decided to resume physical hearing on a trial basis for some categories and some courtrooms but full-fledged physical hearing is still being mulled over by the court. The parliamentary committee had also suggested continuing with the virtual hearing even after the resumption of physical courts citing their benefits like accessibility.