Courts will take 320 years to clear backlog cases: Justice Rao

HYDERABAD: Indian judiciary would take 320 years to clear the backlog of 31.28 million cases pending in various courts including High courts in the country, Andhra Pradesh High Court judge Justice V V Rao said.

"If one considers the total pendency of cases in the Indian judicial system, every judge in the country will have an average load of about 2,147 cases," Justice Rao said, while delivering the keynote address on E-Governance in Judiciary.

India has 14,576 judges as against the sanctioned strength of 17,641 including 630 High Court Judges. This works out to a ratio of 10.5 judges per million population, Justice Rao said.

The Apex court in 2002 had suggested 50 judges per million population, he said.

If the norm of 50 judicial officers per million becomes reality by 2030 when the country's population would be 1.5 to 1.7 billion, the number of judges would go upto 1.25 lakh dealing with 300 million case.

A recent study indicated that the number of new cases has direct relationship with increasing literacy rate and awareness, he said.

Citing example of Kerala, a high literacy state, he said with awareness, 28 new cases per 1000 population per annum have been added, whereas, Bihar with relatively low literacy rate the figure stands at just three, he said.

He opined that the use of Information and Communication Technologies in judiciary helps judicial administration in speedy disposal of cases by providing access to legal and judicial database to judges.