New Delhi: Nearly 70,000 cases are pending before the Supreme Court as on January 1, 2023. The monthly statistics released by the top court on its website showed that the number of pending cases currently stands at 69,768.
As many as 50,533 matters are admission matters out of which 39,460 matters are such which have their formalities completed and are ready to be listed for hearing. As per the statistics, 19,235 are regular hearing matters that are pending out of which 37 matters are not ready for hearing as their preliminaries like notice of lodgement of appeal is not filed and the statement is not served.
According to a release by the court "15.92% matters are incomplete/not ready required preliminaries to be completed," read the release of the court. "Out of 69,768 pending matters, 11,110 matters(11,073 incomplete miscellaneous matters and 37 not ready regular hearing matters) are such matters which cannot be listed for hearing before Hon'ble court," read the release.
There are 488 constitutional bench matters that are pending before the court and 54 of such are main matters and 434 are connected matters. As many as 338 constitution bench matters are pending before the five-judge bench,15 are pending before the seven-judge bench and 135 are pending before the nine-judge bench, 295 connected matters are pending before the five-judge bench, 9 before the seven-judge bench, and 130 before the nine-judge bench.
Constitution matters have been given more importance since UU Lalit took over as the CJI and the same is continuing after the current CJI DY Chandrachud took over. CJI Lalit had constituted constitution benches that would sit throughout the year and hear the matters regularly, on specific days of the week. He has continued with the practice and constitution benches sit regularly hearing many pending cases at length. A lot of cases like pleas challenging demonetization, EWS quota, etc which had been pending for a long time were finally heard.
Pendency of cases is a matter of major concern in the judiciary and the top court has been trying to dispose of cases expeditiously by streamlining the listing of cases, not granting adjournment unless there is a very important reason, sitting during lunch and sometimes post-court hours. The Supreme Court has been hearing around 1500 cases in one week.
