67000 in High Court, 196000 in subordinate courts
Nasir Azam
Srinagar: As many as 2.63 lakh civil and criminal cases are pending in Jammu & Kashmir courts for disposal.
Official information available with news agency- Kashmir News Observer (KNO) lay bare that 67456 cases- 7946 criminal cases and 59510 civil cases- are pending in common High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh Union Territories.
Under the Re-Organisation Act, the High Court of the erstwhile State of J&K serves as common High Court for both the UTs which came into existence on October 31, 2019.
The High Court is presently short of five judges as it has only 12 judges against sanctioned strength of 17.
The official information also reveals that 196393 cases are pending in subordinate courts of Jammu & Kashmir. Of which 78436 are civil cases and 117957 are criminal cases.
It is worthwhile to mention that the case clearance rate of Jammu & Kashmir’s subordinate courts is 16 percent more than its High Court. As already reported by KNO, the case clearance rate of J&K High Court stood at 76.20 per cent for the period between 2017 to 2019. In the same period, the CCR of J&K Subordinate Court was 92. 60 percent.
The CCR is defined as the number of cases cleared in a year measured against the cases filed that year.
The Economic Survey 2018-19 defines Case Clearance Rate (CCR) “as the ratio of the number of cases disposed of in a given year to the number of cases instituted in that year.”—(KNO)
