Introduction
With over 5.4 crore cases pending across various tiers of the Indian court system according to the National Judicial Data Grid, judicial delay is often attributed solely to a low judge-to-population ratio. However, the crisis stems equally from deeper governance failures, systemic administrative inertia, and procedural bottlenecks across both the executive and the judiciary.
Governance Failures: The Role of the Executive
- The State as the Chief Litigant: Government departments and public agencies account for nearly 50% of all pending litigation. Bureaucratic risk-aversion, automatic appeals against adverse orders, and poorly drafted subordinate legislation overwhelm courts with routine disputes, as evidenced by litigation tracking on the LIMBS portal.
- Ineffective National Litigation Policy: Inter-departmental and inter-agency conflicts routinely reach constitutional courts rather than being settled via internal administrative dispute resolution mechanisms, placing unnecessary financial and operational strain on the judiciary.
Institutional and Procedural Deficits
- Chronic Fiscal Underfunding: India spends less than 0.1% of its GDP on the judiciary. This under-allocation starves lower and district courts of basic physical infrastructure, digital connectivity, and adequate registry and clerical staff, creating operational bottlenecks.
- Structural Inefficiencies in Court Functioning: Higher courts continue to follow colonial-era calendars with extensive court vacations, significantly reducing annual operational days. Furthermore, the absence of regional benches of the Supreme Court (as envisaged under Article 130) causes excessive appellate centralisation in New Delhi.
- Procedural Bottlenecks and Culture of Adjournments: Lax compliance with procedural codes leads to frequent, open-ended adjournments. Concurrently, mechanisms such as pre-litigation mediation remain underutilised despite statutory backing under the Mediation Act, 2023, channeling routine grievances into full-dress adversarial litigation.
Conclusion
Addressing pendency requires a holistic shift from merely filling judicial vacancies to fixing institutional plumbing. Curbing frivolous government appeals, scaling AI-driven case management under e-Courts Phase III, and mandating alternative dispute resolution are critical to fulfilling the constitutional promise of speedy justice.