No end in sight to HC crisis as judges’ strength dips to half, pending cases mount to 4.28 lakh
The Punjab and Haryana High Court is staring at a worsening judicial crisis, with pendency of over 4.28 lakh cases and the judge strength down to nearly half — 51 judges against the sanctioned strength of 85. The number is likely to register a dip with Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Manjari Nehru Kaul retiring this year, followed by nine others in 2026.
The number of Judges went down by two from 53 earlier this month with the elevation of Justice Arun Palli as the Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court and the retirement of Justice Karamjit Singh on April 16.
The Judges retiring next year include Chief Justice Sheel Nagu, Justice Anupinder Singh Grewal, Justice SP Sharma, Justice GS Gill, Justice Anil Kshetarpal, Justice Meenakshi I Mehta, Justice Archana Puri, Justice Sukhvinder Kaur and Justice Sanjiv Berry.
Though the high court has already forwarded names of the district and sessions judges from Punjab and Haryana for elevation after a gap of more than two years, the process is expected to take time. The last recommendation for advocates’ elevation was made by the high court collegium nearly two years ago.
The high court currently has 4,28,394 pending cases—down by around 4,000 cases since January following concerted efforts to deal with the “legacy” matters. Of these, 2, 62,125 are civil matters and 1, 66,269 are criminal cases, directly impacting life and liberty. Alarmingly, nearly 82 per cent of these cases have remained unresolved for over a year.
National Judicial Data Grid — the monitoring tool to identify, manage and reduce pendency — reveals that 79,098 pending cases or 18 per cent of the total fall in the category of less than one year. Another 71,175 cases or 17 per cent have been awaiting adjudication for one to three years.
Available information suggests 32,574 cases, accounting for eight per cent, have been pending for three to five years, while 1,23,526 cases or 29 per cent remain unresolved for five to 10 years. As many as 1, 22,021 cases or 28 per cent of the total have been pending for over a decade.
It is believed that the high court is currently in the process of considering the names of advocates for elevation to the Bench. But the system of appointing high court judges is lengthy and time consuming. Once cleared by the states and the Governors after recommendation by the high court collegium, the file containing the names with intelligence bureau reports is placed before the Supreme Court collegium when it meets.
The names cleared for elevation are then sent to the Union Law Ministry before their warrants of appointment are signed by the President. The entire exercise can take several months, if not taken up on a priority basis.
Punjab