The country’s judicial backlog continues to be weighed down by decades-old litigation, with the Allahabad High Court emerging as the single biggest contributor to long-pending cases in the higher judiciary, according to data placed before Parliament by the Centre.
Event Context
In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha last week, minister of state (Independent Charge) for law and justice Arjun Ram Meghwal said that while the Supreme Court had 26 cases pending for more than 30 years, the 25 high courts together had 80,660 such cases. Strikingly, the Allahabad High Court alone accounted for 53,787 of them — nearly two out of every three cases pending for over three decades in the country’s high courts.
The figures, based on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) as on July 16, 2026, also show that the Allahabad High Court has the highest overall pendency among all high courts at 1.22 million cases. Of these, 161,000 have been pending for more than 20 years, 488,000 for over 10 years, and 730,000 for more than five years. More than 1.07 million cases, which is about 88% of its total docket, are over a year old.
The data underscores the disproportionate burden borne by the Allahabad High Court. While it accounts for roughly one-fifth of the total pendency across all 25 high courts (1.22 million out of 6.47 million cases), it alone houses around 67% of all cases pending for over 30 years, more than one-third of cases older than 20 years, and about 30% of all cases pending for over a decade.
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The next highest number of cases pending for over 30 years was reported by the Calcutta High Court at 11,417, followed by the Bombay High Court (3,901), Patna High Court (3,513), Madras High Court (3,118) and Rajasthan High Court (2,111). However, each of these courts trails Allahabad by a wide margin.
Overall, the high courts had 6.47 million pending cases as on July 16. Of these, 452,000 had been pending for more than 20 years, 1.61 million for over 10 years, 2.97 million for over five years and 5.24 million for more than a year.
To be sure, the Allahabad High Court is currently functioning with just 108 judges against a sanctioned strength of 160, leaving 52 vacancies — a vacancy rate of 33%, among the highest in the country.
The vacancy figures, however, do not by themselves explain the persistence of decades-old litigation. Several high courts are functioning with a higher proportion of vacant judges than Allahabad’s 33%, yet have a far smaller stock of the country’s oldest cases.
The Calcutta High Court, for instance, has a vacancy rate of 43% but 11,417 cases pending for more than 30 years. The Orissa High Court has 45% vacancies but only 376 such cases, while the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court, despite the country’s highest vacancy rate of 52%, has just four cases pending for over three decades. Gujarat and Punjab & Haryana, each with 35% vacancies, have only 19 and 303 cases, respectively, in the over-30-year category.
The Supreme Court had 96,024 pending matters, including 26 pending for over 30 years, 558 for over 20 years, 10,094 for more than a decade, 24,611 for over five years and 49,248 for more than one year.
The data also points to an equally daunting challenge in the subordinate judiciary, where nearly 50 million cases remain pending across the country. District and subordinate courts together had 49.8 million pending cases, including 81,275 that are over 30 years old, 721,000 pending for more than 20 years and 5.43 million pending for over a decade.
Among subordinate courts, Uttar Pradesh had the largest backlog at nearly 11.9 million cases, including 37,394 matters pending for over 30 years and more than 2.3 million cases older than a decade. Maharashtra followed with 6.18 million pending cases, while West Bengal had 4.1 million and Bihar 3.76 million pending matters.
Responding to a question by Rajya Sabha member Dilip Kumar Ray, Meghwal reiterated that disposal of cases falls within the exclusive domain of the judiciary and said pendency arises from multiple factors, including the complexity of cases, nature of evidence and cooperation of stakeholders such as lawyers, investigating agencies, witnesses and litigants.
The minister said the Centre has nevertheless undertaken several measures to improve the justice delivery system, including the ₹7,210-crore Phase III of the e-Courts Project, the Fast Track Special Courts scheme for rape and POCSO cases, constitution of arrears committees in all high courts and district courts to clear cases pending for more than five years, legislative amendments aimed at reducing pendency, and promotion of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as Lok Adalats.
