The pendency of cases in India should be viewed in light of the number of cases filed each year and the quality of decisions made by courts at all levels, former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna said.

Speaking at the inaugural Justice S H Kapadia Memorial Lecture on Sunday, the former CJI said that the entire discourse on the judiciary was often reduced to the pendency of cases at various levels, without giving the context and the various factors impacting the backlog.

Khanna also said that while judicial delay hurts the economy and economic progress, a bigger victim of prolonged justice delivery is personal liberty.

“Any delay in criminal justice process has consequences that are immediate and irreversible. For this reason, the judicial data must be rated through the lens of incarceration as well as the speed of disposal of criminal cases,” he said.

For example, in 2021, nearly 14.7 million Indians were arrested by various law enforcement officials across the country, while in 2024, nearly 14 million Indians were arrested for various offences. Of these, roughly seven million charge sheets were filed every year, leading to a huge number of cases being instituted in courts every calendar year.

While nearly 50 per cent of the nearly 14 million Indians who are arrested every year get bail within the first 24 hours, the rest are put through long processes of the justice system and end up waiting for trial for up to five years. Nearly 69 per cent of these undertrial people are, however, released by courts within the first year of their incarceration, he said.

The composition of cases at the various levels of judiciary also gives an insight into the rising pendency of cases, Khanna said.

At the Supreme Court and High Courts level, of all the cases filed, nearly 30 per cent were criminal, while about 70 per cent were civil matters pertaining to challenges to the government’s policy decisions. However, at the district court level, nearly 70 per cent of all cases filed were criminal, while only 30 per cent were civil cases, he said.

“About 24.2 million criminal cases are filed in district courts every year across India, and about 230,000 cases are disposed of during the same time,” he said, adding that a majority of these criminal cases were about the Negotiable Instruments Act and matters related to cheque-bouncing, among others.