SC pendency watch: Constitutional cases make up 0.06% of pending cases; Nearly 66% of pending cases “incomplete”

The Supreme Court recently released its pendency figures (as of November 1, 2013) with 65,893 cases pending for adjudication. Out of these, Constitutional matters (cases that are heard by 5 judges or more) number just 39 or 0.06 % of the total pending cases. This minuscule percentage gains significance if one were to examine the original intent behind creating the Supreme Court as well as the kind of matters that were to reach the highest court of the country. Another interesting statistic that can be culled out from the latest figures is the fact that the majority of cases (close to two-thirds) are pending due to procedural non-compliance, ie failure to serve all parties, payment of process fees etc. The Supreme Court defines these cases as “incomplete” ones where preliminaries (such as payment of process fees) have not been completed..Total Pending Matters versus Constitutional Matters.The percentage of pending Constitutional Matters does not cross the 0.1 % mark over the course of the first ten months of the year. If one were to argue that the Supreme Court was initially created to primarily deal only with matters such as those affecting Constitutional jurisprudence, then these figures are indeed worrying. The Apex Court, burdened with a massive pendency, clearly does not have the time or resources to focus on cases of Constitutional importance. .Percentage of Referral Matters in Total Pending Matters.In percentage terms, the total number of pending Referred Matters make an equally tiny component of the total pending matters, peaking at 0.24% before falling to a low of 0.20% in the middle of the year. This is another, equally worrying trend observable over the last few years. With the 30 judges of the Supreme Court sitting in Division Benches, a Referred Matter must be heard by a Bench consisting of at-least three judges. In many ways, failure to dispose of referred matters will only have a cascading effect on overall pendency. Since the Supreme Court is the final court of the country, the absence of a final, unambiguous decision means that courts below are likely to arrive at conflicting decisions, which in turn leads to further litigation. .Disposal Rates.If one were to examine the disposal of cases over the past ten months, it is unsurprising to see the massive increase in pendency during the Summer Vacation. Between the 1st of June and the 1st of July, the number of Admission matters increased by 1,600 matters while the number of pending Regular matters increaed by 59 cases. .The disposal rates for the year so far have shown a marked increase in the months immediately following the summer vacation. For instance, between the 1st of July and the 1st of August, the number of pending Admission matters decreased by a massive 1,841 cases. In the months that followed, this number was slowly chipped away at, eventually reaching 36,508 (it was 37,659 at the beginning of the year). Overall the number of pendencies (Regular Matters) has remained almost the same throughout the first nine months, hovering at the 30,000 mark. This may well be the reason why the Supreme Court, in September this year, decided to devote two days a week exclusively for Regular Hearing matters. .It should be noted that the table above reflects the net disposal rate, and not the actual number of cases the Supreme Court disposes of in a month. For instance, in September this year, of the 6860 admission matters filed, the Supreme Court disposed of 6,608 of them. When it comes to Regular Hearing matters, the Apex Court managed to dispose of 767 out of the 1,042 matters registered that month. Hence the figures given below is symptomatic of the larger issue of judicial backlog – if a group of 30 judges can dispose of 6,608 matters a month (roughly 236 matters every working day) and still have an increase in number of pending matters, then clearly much requires to be done..The report can be downloaded here.