New Delhi: Pending cases across various courts in the country are moving towards the five crore-mark with an over 4.32 crore backlog in subordinate courts, according to data shared by the government in Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
In separate written replies, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said as on December 31, 2022, the total pending cases in district and subordinate courts was pegged at over 4.32 crore.
He also said over 69,000 cases are pending in the Supreme Court, while there is a backlog of more than 59 lakh cases in the country’s 25 high courts.
Citing details available on the Supreme Court website, Rijiju said 69,511 cases were pending in the top court as on February 1.
“There are 59,87,477 cases pending in high courts across the country, as per the information available on National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) on February 1, 2023,” he said.
Out of these, 10.30 lakh cases were pending in the Allahabad High Court — the biggest high court of the country. The Sikkim High Court has the least number of 171 cases.
The total pending cases comes to 4,92,67,373 or over 4.92 crore.
The government, Rijiju said, has taken several initiatives to provide “suitable environment” for expeditious disposal of cases by the judiciary.
At an event earlier, the minister had said: “I try to analyse about the bottleneck when we take the numbers. It is inching towards the five crore pendency. It is a matter of great concern. It is really difficult for me to answer … it is about to reach five crore. At the present rate, maybe it will take another couple of months to reach the five crore figure, which does not sound nice,” he said.
The majority of the cases are pending with the subordinate judiciary.
“I feel the pendency in the SC and the HCs will come down, but the real challenge is in the lower courts. The infrastructure in the lower courts is a real challenge for me and that is the responsibility of the central government and the state governments together,” he had said.

Press Trust of India