Cases’ backlog worries judiciaries of Pakistan, India

LAHORE: A gigantic backlog of court cases is haunting the judiciaries of both Pakistan and India, research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” reveals as debates on this issue are now a routine on either side of the border.

As far as the 17-member Supreme Court of Pakistan is concerned, the number of pending cases in August 2024 had rested at 82,887.

At the 34-member Indian Supreme Court, the backlog of cases has soared to almost 83,000, the highest ever!

Shortage of judges and non-judicial staff, inadequate funding, lack of infrastructure and abuse of legal procedure to ineffective legal frameworks etc have often been cited by jurists in both nations as being the root causes behind the huge backlogs.

Calculations show that with a population of 251.269 million in 2024 and with strength of judges resting at 4,000, there is only one judge available for 62,817 Pakistanis, whereas the situation is not much different in India where 25,773 judges are available to cater to the legal needs of 1.451 billion Indians, meaning thereby that there is one arbiter for 56,297 people in the world’s largest democracy.

For the third time in last five months, senior Supreme Court of Pakistan arbiter, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, who is also heading the Arbitration Law Reforms Committee, Tuesday remarked that only 4,000 judges in the country cannot clear the backlog of undecided cases.

Research further tells us that in February 2024, the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan had released the Bi-Annual Report of Judicial Statistics (July to December 2023), which revealed that the overall pendency of cases in Pakistan had increased to 2.26 million.

On February 25, 2023, according to a Supreme Court Press release, the pendency of cases in the Apex Court of Pakistan had stood at 52,450.

In 2024, the total number of pending cases in India had surged to 51 million, with over 180,000 court cases pending for more than 30 years in district and high courts.

According to statistics of Indian Department of Justice, National Judicial Data Grid of India, the India Today, Press Trust of India, the Economic Times, NDTV and The Hindu, over 45 million or 87 per cent of all cases in India are pending in district courts as of 2024.

Government itself is the biggest litigant having 50 per cent of the pending cases being sponsored by the state.

According to a 2018 study, when the number of pending cases was 29 million, it was estimated that it would take more than 324 years to clear the backlog.

In 2022, the sanctioned strength of judges in India was 21.03 judges per million population. The absolute sanctioned strength of judges were 34 in Supreme Court, 1108 in high courts, and 24,631 in district courts, and the working strength of judges in India was 14.4 judges per million population.