The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a public interest litigation (PIL) petition calling for the disposal of pending cases across the entire Indian judiciary within eleven months [Madan Gopal Agarwal v. Ministry of Law and Justice].
A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra pointed out that Indian courts have unmanageable workloads as it is.
The Court noted that while it was desirable that cases are disposed of quickly and within deadlines, such goals were difficult to implement in India given its high case pendency.
"Very desirable; but unachievable. Do you know how many cases the US Supreme Court deals with? The amount of cases we disposed off in 17 benches in a day is what US supreme court decides in a year. We cannot restrict who can come to this court and who cannot. You see," CJI Chandrachud observed.
The Bench, thus, dismissed the plea by one Madan Gopal Agarwal, seeking the speedy disposal of cases pending before the apex court, High Courts and lower courts.
The high case pendency across the country also recently led the Supreme Court to observe that it cannot compel High Courts to take up cases in a time-bound manner.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Prasanna B Varale had added that High Courts are not subordinate to the apex court to issue such directions.
Similar observations were made in February 2023, when it was noted that the High Courts are also constitutional courts and cannot be regarded as subordinate to the Supreme Court.
A year earlier, it had held that High Courts do not function under the administrative superintendence of the Supreme Court while rejecting a plea that objected to the working hours of the Bombay High Court during the COVID pandemic.