NEW DELHI: A growing backlog in consumer courts has left many complainants waiting for years despite a five-month legal timeline for case resolution.
If you’ve filed a consumer complaint and are still waiting, you’re not alone. A new study by the India Justice Report (IJR) shows that a large number of cases in India’s consumer courts are dragging on for years.
Nearly 35 per cent of cases in state consumer commissions have been pending for over three years, even though the law says they should ideally be resolved within five months.
The report – Consumer Justice Report 2026: Assessing Capacity of Redressal Commissions in India – is based on data collected through Right to Information (RTI) replies and parliamentary responses. It points to a widening gap between legal timelines and actual delivery.
The bigger worry is that the pile-up is growing, not shrinking. Between 2020 and 2024, a part of the cases simply didn’t move. Out of 7.6 lakh complaints filed across the country, about 11 per cent remained unresolved. During the same time, the backlog kept building up, rising by 21 per cent to cross 5 lakh cases.
A big reason behind this slowdown is the lack of people to run the system. In 2025, only 18 out of 35 state commissions had a president, leaving half the top posts vacant. Member posts are also lying empty in large numbers, i.e. about 40 per cent are unfilled, and even basic staff support is thin, with roughly one in five positions vacant (20%).
On top of that, access to these forums is still uneven on the ground. There are only 685 district commissions for 775 districts across the country, despite a legal requirement to have one in each district.
Most complaints are linked to everyday sectors such as insurance (25.1%), housing (18.7%) and banking (8.7%), highlighting how delays directly affect consumers dealing with financial issues.
The delays are not uniform. Some states are clearly struggling more than others.
Kerala stands out for the wrong reasons, as nearly eight out of ten cases there have been pending for more than three years (79.2%). Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand are not far behind, both with over 70 per cent long-pending cases (70.8% each).
In Uttar Pradesh (61.8%) and Uttarakhand (56.8%) too, more than half the cases have been stuck for years.
On the other hand, a few states show that quicker resolution is possible. Andhra Pradesh stands out for managing things relatively well, with fewer than 5 per cent of cases pending for over three years (4.8%). Sikkim (7.1%) and Himachal Pradesh (9.0%) also report relatively low delays.
But it’s not the same story everywhere. In states like Assam (47.2%), Madhya Pradesh (41.0%) and Haryana (35.6%), many cases are still stuck in limbo, i.e. not moving fast enough to bring relief, but not entirely frozen either.
Even where disposal rates look decent on paper, the backlog isn’t easing. Across the country, about 89 per cent of cases were disposed of between 2020 and 2024 (88.6%), and some states even cleared more cases than they received.
But that hasn’t been enough to stop the overall number of pending cases from rising, a sign that the system is still under strain.
Agencies