Supreme Court’s pendency crosses 82,000 despite full force of 34 judges most of the time in past two years

Supreme Court under Chief Justice Chandrachud minimizes vacancies, but faces record high backlog of over 82,000 cases.

Ever since the appointment of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud as the top judge on November 9, 2022, the Supreme Court has managed to keep its judicial vacancies to the minimum.

Except for a brief delay between December 13, 2022 and January 31, 2023, appointment of judges to the top court has proceeded relatively smoothly. For the most part of 2023 and the current year, the court has functioned with its full sanctioned strength of 34 judges.

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Yet, the National Judicial Data Grid figures on August 31 show a record high of 82,887 pending cases. Chief Justice Chandrachud had inherited a backlog of 69,647 cases in November 2022 when he took over as the top judge. The pendency by the end of 2023 was a little over 80,000 cases.

The unceasing increase in backlog over the past two years raises the question whether a solution to pendency lies beyond maintaining the full sanctioned judicial strength of 34 judges.

Several resolutions of the Supreme Court Collegium led by Chief Justice Chandrachud in the past two years have explicitly voiced concern about the “huge workload”.

For example, a November 2023 resolution points out that the “Supreme Court has a huge backlog of cases”.