India’s top court carries an enormous burden of cases. How does it decide which cases to hear and prioritise? What informs the policy of Chief Justices of India to tackle pendency?
Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna was sworn in by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on November 11. (@rashtrapatibhvn/X)
A large number of cases are filed before the Supreme Court every year, even as thousands of other cases are already pending. How does the Supreme Court decide which cases to prioritise?
Over the last month, the SC has been prioritising special leave petitions (SLPs). These are cases where the court would have issued notice to the parties over the last few years, but is yet to admit (grant leave or permission to appeal) them.
The court has been hearing these cases for three days of the workweek, and has kept only Mondays and Fridays for fresh cases. In effect, the SC is limiting the listing of cases in which a detailed hearing is required.
This is part of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna’s plan to address the large backlog of cases in the top court. As master of the roster, successive CJIs have attempted to tackle the problem of pendency in various ways.
Weekly case schedule
On November 16, five days after Justice Khanna took office as the 51st CJI, the SC on the administrative side issued a circular saying “after notice miscellaneous matters” would be heard on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Also, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, “no regular hearing matter shall be listed till further orders”, the circular said.
“After notice miscellaneous matters” are cases in which the court issues “notice” to the other party in a “fresh matter”. A case becomes a “regular hearing matter” after it has been “admitted”. (More on this later.)
This prioritising of cases that can be either admitted or rejected quickly over those that require full-length arguments from both sides seeks to tackle the ever-increasing backlog of cases at the court. As per the National Judicial Data Grid, more than 82,000 cases are pending in the SC currently.
“After notice miscellaneous matters” require the court to simply decide whether to admit or dismiss an appeal. This is often done quickly, in brief hearings.
Case types and numbers
According to the book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India, co-authored by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru professor Aparna Chandra, the SC accepts only 14% of SLPs that are filed.
SLPs are essentially appeals (against an order of a High Court) but the SC has to grant “leave” for them to be heard. Dismissal of these cases means an immediate reduction in pendency.
However, according to data in the book, in the four years from 2010 to 2014, the SC heard more than 60,000 such cases every year on average before deciding whether to admit them.
Appeals, the bulk of which are SLPs, comprise approximately 92.4% of the court’s docket, and a typical hearing on whether to admit an SLP lasts for just 1 minute and 33 seconds on average, says the book.
But once a case is taken up for full hearing by the court, it takes more than four years on average before the judgment is passed, with many cases taking “twice as long or longer”.
On the other hand, regular hearing matters are often already pending for years, and this approach only extends the pendency.
Other CJIs’ approaches
CJI Khanna’s predecessors in the office approached the issue of pendency differently. While CJI Khanna has prioritised admission-stage cases, his predecessors focussed on tackling cases that need regular hearings and Constitution Bench hearings.
From February 2023 to the end of former CJI D Y Chandrachud’s tenure, the SC heard only regular hearing matters on Wednesdays and Thursdays. No “after notice miscellaneous matters” were listed on these two days.
Both Justice Chandrachud and his predecessor CJI U U Lalit (who had a short tenure of just three months) focused on hearing long-pending constitutional matters.
In his farewell speech, Justice Chandrachud said that during his tenure (November 2022 to November 2024), pendency of regular cases fell from 28,682 to 22,000.
However, CJI Chandrachud’s tenure also saw throngs of lawyers “mentioning” their cases for urgent hearings before the CJI’s court.
Journey of cases in SC
Behind the public-facing functions of the SC — which include conducting hearings, writing (and delivering) judgments, and making public appearances — is the administrative machine of the court, the “Registry”.
The SC Registry has two wings — the administration and the judicial. Each of these wings is divided into various divisions, with their own administrative responsibilities such as case listing, technology, issues related to the court and buildings, human resources, etc.
Each division is headed by a Registrar, and the Registry as a whole is led by the Secretary General, who is the highest administrative officer in the Supreme Court, and reports to the CJI.
Typically, an Advocate-on-Record (AoR) — a lawyer who is authorised to represent clients at the SC after passing a certification exam — files a case along with the required supporting documents, either at the filing counter, or through the court’s e-Filing portal.
The case goes to a “dealing assistant” in a part of the court that is known to advocates as “Section 1B”. The assistant verifies the identity of the AoR and whether they have been granted power of attorney by the client through a signed vakalatnama, and generates a permanent “diary number” for the case.
The petition and supporting documents are scrutinised for any defects such as incorrect party information, absence of signatures, or wrong format. According to a 2018 circular issued by the Registry, defects must be cured within 90 days. In such cases, both the assistant and a superior officer of the Registry checks the re-filed case to ensure the defects have been cured.
Following the verification, the case is registered and sent to the listing department, which lists it for hearing on a date that is, in normal circumstances, allotted automatically.
Once a case is “listed”, it comes up before a Bench as a “fresh” matter. As per SC rules, these cases have been heard on Mondays and Fridays for decades now, which are known as “Miscellaneous days”.
If the court does not immediately dismiss the case, it sends a “notice” to the other party seeking a reply to the case against them. The case is then known as an “after notice miscellaneous matter”. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are also referred to as “non-miscellaneous days” or NMDs.
On these days, the court lists cases that need both parties to be heard, and written submissions considered before it is decided whether to admit the case.
After admission, another schedule of detailed “final hearing” takes place, after which a verdict is delivered.
