Source: Annexure A to M of the Main Report of Objectives Accomplishments in Phase 2, Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, eCommittee, Supreme Court of India

Litigation Density in 2018

The reason this is important is that Uttar Pradesh tops all the pendency charts. Especially, delays in deciding criminal cases. The first instinct is to attribute that to its sheer size and population. That assumption would be wrong. UP has the 2nd highest litigation density in the country - most of it criminal. Since private criminal complaints are comparatively rare in India, this is mostly the state v the people. The honor of highest litigation per 100,000 people goes to Kerela, a much smaller state.

I haven't parsed enough data to have a view on whether this is because crime is that high in UP, Kerela, Bihar & West Bengal, or whether these governments are overly penalizing.

Also, predictably, not only did the Justice Department stop giving out this number by 2020, but it also even made it extremely difficult to calculate it after that. National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) dashboards are designed to make collation of data a long and laborious process. For an Open Government in the Digital Age, this is quite a disappointment.

Cases Pending by State - 2019

The way to read the data is this:

1. 'Pendency' is cases carried forward from the previous years (that is 2018)

2. 'Institution' is news cases filed in the ongoing year.

3. 'Disposal' is cases that were disposed since the last yearly account was taken (This is a tricky number because Indian legal statisticians never clearly specify when that date is exactly. From January 1 of the current year, or from the 12 months before the data is being presented).

4. Finally, Real Pendency = Pendency+Institution-Disposal

Judicial Delays- A few Data Slices

Note:

Drop in a mail if you want a sortable excel sheet for this data or a copy of the Department of Justice report.

Ends