More than 6,000 cases disposed of after Chandrachud taking charge as CJI

Supreme Court has disposed of more than 6,000 cases since Chief Justice DY Chandrachud took over as per the data released by the court, writes Maitrie Jha of ETV Bharat.

New Delhi:As per the data released by the Supreme Court, it has disposed of 6,844 cases in a period of one month and seven days since Chief Justice DY Chandrachud took charge. It includes 2,511 bail and transfer petitions. In the last working week of the Supreme Court before it went for winter vacation 1,500 matters were listed for hearing to dispose of.

CJI DY Chandrachud has been taking up around 50 mentions of cases every day for urgent hearings. The backlog of cases has been a major controversial issue for the Indian judiciary and the Supreme Court and the government both have flagged it during various events. CJI Chandrachud, since he assumed the charge, has spoken during various hearings that numerous cases are being listed every day, and judges are burning the midnight oil to prepare for cases so that they are disposed of.

He is also very particular about not adjourning the case when it comes up and often insists that juniors argue if the senior advocate is absent. Recently, Union Law minister Kiren Rijju informed the Rajya Sabha that there are a total of 69,744 cases that are pending in the top court as of November 29. The total number of cases that were filed in 2022 was 28,651 and disposed of stands at 29,109.

As per the top court's monthly data, a total of 69,598 cases have been pending as of December 1, 2022, out of which 11,238 cases cannot be listed for hearing in the court as their preliminaries are not complete. Pending cases include 488 constitution bench matters. At the beginning of the year, i.e; on January 1, 2022, total pending matters amounted to 70,239.

Recently, pending cases issue was raised even in Parliament and the Union Law Minister spoke of long vacations to the court. Many factors are considered responsible for the pendency of cases like vacancy, infrastructure, a variety of cases that the top court has to hear an d adjournments. The court is currently on winter break and will reopen next year on January 2, 2023.

No vacation benches are constituted for the winter break and in case something urgent comes up registrar can be contacted and then it will be conveyed to the judges. In case the court is satisfied that the matter requires urgent attention, a bench will be constituted and the matter will be heard.