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Report No. 253 Table 2.7: Breakdown of delays in disposal of civil suits in each High Court with original civil jurisdiction.
2.5.2 Analysis of the above data shows that of the 32,386 pending civil suits, 16,508 suits, or 50.97%, have been pending disposal for more than five years. The problem seems especially acute in Calcutta High Court which, despite having reduced pendency of civil suits in ten years, still has a significantly large percentage of cases which have been pending for ten years or more, as is evident from a combined reading of Tables 2, 3 and 7. 2.5.3 In its 188th Report, the Law Commission recommended that a time limit of two years be placed on the disposal of civil suits from the date of completion of service on the other side.22 Therefore, an assumption can be made that suits pending for less than two years are not part of the problem, although this would also depend on the type of case pending for less than two years. In any event, focusing our attention only on those suits that have been pending for more than two years, we find that nearly 75% of the suits have been pending for such time and can be classified as "delayed". 22. Law Commission of India, 188th Report, supra note 1, at 176-177. 2.5.4 The Law Commission has, in its 245th Report on Arrears and Backlog Creating Additional Judicial (Wo)manpower also made a distinction between "arrears" and "delay". "Arrears" are a subset of "delay" for when the case has been delayed for unwarranted reasons.23 In the present case, even if we assume that all suits delayed up to five years have largely been delayed for justified reasons (which may not be true), there are still a significant number of suits (more than 50%) which constitute "arrears" that seem to have been delayed beyond reasonable limits. 23. Law Commission of India, Arrears and Backlog Creating Additional Judicial (Wo)manpower, Report No. 245 (2014), at 3-4 (hereinafter "Law Commission of India, 245th Report). 2.5.5 Therefore, it would stand to reason that for efficient and effective disposal of civil suits, especially those relating to commercial disputes, any effort to create an exclusive commercial division can only succeed if the High Court's original pecuniary jurisdiction is restricted only to high value commercial disputes.    |
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