SC trashes 13,147 old cases in one stroke to unclog justice delivery system

In a big step towards unclogging the top judiciary burdened with humongous pendency of cases, the Supreme Court has, in one massive sweep, binned 13,147 old "diarized but unregistered" cases, including one filed more than three decades ago.

An order issued by Registrar Judicial-1 Chirag Bhanu Singh on Thursday said all these cases were filed more than eight years ago but the defects pointed out by the Registry to the respective counsel or petitioners in-person were not "cured".

The cases got the diary numbers prior to the year 2014, and the list included a case filed way back in 1987.

These petitions just sat idly in the Registry, adding to the ever growing pendency.

As per the data uploaded on the Supreme Court website, there were as many as 70,310 pendig cases as on September 1, 2022. These included 51,839 miscellaneous matters and 18,471 related to regular hearing.

The order by the Supreme Court registrar said the parties to the cases seemingly do not intend to prosecute the ..