The Supreme Court is using this high court as its “pilot project” to look into pendency

In an attempt to address the growing concern of pendency in high courts, the Supreme Court has directed the Allahabad High Court to provide details of its pending criminal appeals..A Bench of Justices J Chelameswar, AM Sapre and Amitava Roy passed an order to this effect on March 31, while hearing a bail application in a case from the Allahabad High Court..The Court had earlier sought the suggestions of Senior Advocates Shyam Divan and CU Singh with a view to outlining specific guidelines for disposal of criminal appeals..To this end, the Court has decided to take up the Allahabad High Court as a “pilot project”. Making its reasons for starting with this High Court clear, the court stated,.“The choice of the High Court, we may clarify, is only in view of the extent of pendency and the frequently expressed concern over the relatively longer disposal time in the adjudication of the criminal appeals before it, which as well is noticeable from the contemporaneous records. .We wish to state that the selection of the High Court by no means is an indication of any deficiency in the functioning or the ongoing endeavours on its part in addressing the issue…”.As per the Supreme Court’s Annual Report, the Allahabad High Court’s pendency of 9.24 lakh cases is the highest in the country. 3.09 lakh of these cases are more than ten years old..The court also highlighted the importance of obtaining data in tackling the issue of pendency..“…we are of the view that it is imperative for this Court to initiate a target specific exercise and for the purpose obtain and analyze the relevant datas at the first instance, with regard to the pendency of the criminal appeals before the Allahabad High Court and in conjunction therewith examine the feasibility to launch & monitor effective remedial steps to expedite the hearing and disposal thereof…”.The Bench also directed the Registrar of the High Court to submit the particulars of the criminal appeals pending with the stages thereof, institution and disposal statistics of the last ten years, average disposal time of appeals, identified causes for delay, and the mechanism in place to deal with the issue..This information has to be furnished by the High Court within four weeks..Dushyant Parashar, the petitioner’s counsel, asked the court to direct time-bound hearing of the case, which has been pending in the High Court for the last ten years. Though the court did not grant bail, it proceeded to direct that the case be disposed of within four months..As of June 2016, there are more than 40 lakh cases pending across the twenty four high courts. Meanwhile, the subordinate judiciary has 2.8 crore pending cases..Read the order: