26 cases pending in Supreme Court for 30+ years, 558 cases for 20+ years: Centre in Rajya Sabha

26 cases have been pending before the Supreme Court for more than 30 years, while 558 cases have remained pending for over 20 years, the Central government informed the Rajya Sabha.

The Supreme Court had a total pendency of 95,936 cases as of July 28, 2026, according to data available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

The figures were disclosed by Minister of State for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal in response to a question raised by Rajya Sabha member Dilip Kumar Ray.

The data showed that 10,094 Supreme Court cases were pending for more than 10 years. Another 24,611 cases were over 5 years old, while 49,248 had been pending for more than a year.

The 25 High Courts together had 63.76 lakh pending cases. Of these, 80,634 cases had remained pending for more than 30 years and over 4.51 lakh cases were pending for more than 20 years.

Over 16 lakh High Court cases were more than 10 years old. Nearly 29.51 lakh cases were pending for more than 5 years, while about 51.94 lakh had been pending for over a year.

Among the High Courts, the Allahabad High Court recorded the highest overall pendency at 12.28 lakh cases. It also accounted for the largest number of cases pending for more than 30 years at 53,787. It had 1.61 lakh cases pending for more than 20 years and 4.88 lakh cases pending for over a decade.

The Calcutta High Court had 11,417 cases pending for more than 30 years. The Bombay High Court had 3,901 such cases, followed by the Patna High Court with 3,513 and the Madras High Court with 3,118 cases.

The Rajasthan High Court recorded an overall pendency of 6.96 lakh cases, followed by the Bombay High Court with 6.57 lakh and the Madras High Court with 5.67 lakh cases.

District and subordinate courts across the country had another 4.98 crore pending cases, including 81,275 cases that were more than 30 years old.

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