Lest we forget: How did District Courts perform during COVID-19 Pandemic?

By Atishya Kumar and Shreya Tripathy

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges for the Indian judiciary. While there had been efforts to provide technological infrastructure to Courts across jurisdictions, the groundwork laid down through the e-Courts project was neither sufficient nor consistently available across the country.

This meant that although the Supreme Court could continue hearing “urgent” cases, certain District Courts, which are the courts of first instance in most cases, had to completely shut down as per the directions given by their parent High Court, in the early months of the pandemic.

However, these courts quickly tried to determine how to adapt to the situation and ensure that the institution entrusted to impart justice remained functional and accessible. Many High Courts followed in the steps of the Supreme Court and came up with their own set of measures to optimally utilise their limited capacity and to make the processes litigant-friendly. This was done through the use of innumerable circulars and notifications with varying degrees of success.

A recent report published by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy,  “Data Speak: A look at District Court’s performance during the pandemic” undertakes an analysis of data from  642 District Courts in India to understand the functioning of District Courts during the pandemic.

For the purpose of the analysis, the report divides District Courts into five zones, as per their parent High Court and highlights the trends seen in case institutions, disposals and case types prioritised during the pandemic (2020-2021) in comparison to the two years before the pandemic (2018-2019).

Institution of Cases

The analysis shows that there was a clear decline in the number of cases instituted (32% in total) across the country. However, the decline was not consistent across the zones and even between District Courts under the same parent High Court. 

Most High Courts saw an increase in case filings a year into the pandemic. The larger High Courts - Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, performed quite poorly and in their respective zones had some of the highest fall in case filings.  This trend was also seen in the District Courts under the High Courts of Delhi and Gauhati.

The District Courts in the East Zone, on average, saw a much more drastic decrease in case institutions (38.06%) than the pan-India average decline of 32%. This could be attributed to the fact that none of the High Courts in the East Zone had provided a clear framework regarding e-filing of new cases in the District Courts when the courts were only functioning virtually.

On the other hand, High Courts of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Meghalaya, Telangana and Gujarat tried to develop a framework on e-filing even before the adoption of the portal launched by the eCommittee of the Supreme Court for all District Courts in 2021.

Amongst the District Courts under these 4 High Courts, only Telangana still suffered a major decline in institution of cases (41.72%). The others were able to marginally improve their case institutions during the pandemic as compared to the previous two years-  Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh by 13.04%, Meghalaya by 0.68% and Gujarat by 5.55%.

Another interesting observation that comes through from an analysis of notifications passed by the various High Courts is that the District Courts under the High Courts like Himachal Pradesh, Calcutta and Rajasthan were more focused on ensuring some kind of physical presence in the Court’s premises for administrative work and hearing of urgent matters.

These Courts showed a tendency to open for physical hearings as soon as one wave of the COVID-19 pandemic would die down, however, this did not lead to a significant increase in the number of case filings in 2021 as well. However, it should be noted that it was not only the District Courts under these four courts that had a difficulty in increasing case filings from 2020 to 2021. The District Courts under the High Courts of Manipur, Patna, Kerala and Bombay continued seeing a decline in case filings in 2021 but the reasons behind the decline is not apparent from our research.

It is also fascinating to note that the High Courts like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya and Gujarat, which had completely suspended the functioning of the District Courts under their jurisdiction, other than for police remand for a brief period, adapted quickly and the data does not indicate in any way that this shut down had a bearing on their average case filings or disposals during the pandemic.

Disposal of Cases

As per the report, there was a 42.33% decrease in the disposal of cases during the pandemic as compared to the two years prior to the pandemic. In the initial months, all High Courts, like the Supreme Court, restricted their own functioning as well as those of the District Courts under them till August 2020 as they were moving towards virtual hearings for the first time.

A study by Livelaw revealed that between March 2020 to August 2020 only 11 High Courts clearly prescribed what an “urgent matter” would entail for them and their subordinate courts. The other 14 High Courts left it at the discretion of the presiding officer of the respective Courts and only laid down guidelines as to how lawyers could explain the urgency for the cases to be listed.

However, the data does not indicate that the District Courts under the High Courts that prescribed rules regarding “urgent matters” did any better than the ones which left the same open-ended in terms of case disposals or filings.

Further, the analysis shows that in the North Zone, none of the District Courts under the High Courts of Punjab and Haryana and Delhi disposed of more cases during the pandemic as compared to the pre-pandemic era. One would assume that urban centres may have better access to digital services and facilities and thereby perform better during the pandemic. To the contrary, District Courts such as Jalandhar and Chandigarh witnessed a reduction of more than 65% in the number of cases disposed of. On the other hand, District Courts under the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh saw disposal rate declining by just 3% during the pandemic.

In the East Zone, the worst performing District Courts were Rayagada (78.8% decrease in case disposals) and Nuapada (78.1% decrease in case disposals) in Odisha. On the other hand, various Districts Courts under Jharkhand High Court like Khunti and Ramgarh and Bhojpur and Jehanabad under the Patna High Court on average disposed of more cases during the pandemic.

In the north-east Zone, the performance of the District Courts under Manipur and Sikkim High Courts suffered the most.

In the South Zone, District Courts under the High Court of Kerala were the worst affected and finally, in the West Zone, disposal rate of District Courts under the High Court of Judicature at Bombay suffered the most during the pandemic.

When it comes to the disposal of cases, it is very difficult to ascertain the reasons behind certain District Courts performing better than others from the available data. It is also evident that the urban-rural dichotomy does not stand. Hence, there is a need to undertake a deep dive into the practices of the Courts that performed well across the zones to understand the reasons behind the same.

Similarly, a look into the day-to-day functioning of the worst performing District Courts is necessary to determine the capacity and infrastructure constraints and how they may be improved to make these courts future-ready and disaster-proof. 

Atishya Kumar is a Research Fellow and Shreya Tripathy is a Senior Resident Fellow with the Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal.