Judicial Pendency: Accountability—Or Misattribution? [Part II]

Part-2: Narrative, Capacity, and the Bypass of Law

Dissection of the Narrative of Pendency

The question then arises: why does the narrative of judicial pendency persist, so readily linked with inefficiency and even corruption? The answer lies not in data, but in its absence.

There is no meaningful statistical framework that captures how a case actually moves through its lifespan—how much time is spent in investigation, in securing service, in awaiting witnesses, in execution, and where responsibility for delay truly lies. What exists instead are fragmented indicators. A judicial officer, for instance, submits periodic statements—often around 30 returns in a month—to the High Court and the Supreme Court. These reflect disposal, institution, and pendency. They do not reflect the anatomy of delay.

They do not show how long a case remains stalled. They do not identify who caused the stall. They do not measure the time lost outside the control of the court. In the absence of such data, pendency becomes a number without context. And a number without context is easily converted into accusation.

Narratives thrive where measurement fails. They do not require precision; they require repetition. It is easier to attribute delay to the court than to trace it across parties, police, administration, and the State. The complexity of process is reduced to a single point of blame.

And what cannot be measured is rarely defended.

The Invisible Judiciary

The next question that inevitably arises is whether the officers of the district judiciary possess questionable capability. That question, however, cannot be answered in isolation from the conditions under which they function. Capability is not merely an individual attribute; it is shaped, tested, and often constrained by the institutional environment within which it operates.

Officers of the district judiciary function in near invisibility. They enter public discourse in limited and selective contexts—when their remuneration is questioned, when judicial holidays are perceived as excessive, or when a trivial mistake is highlighted. In the absence of visibility into the conditions under which they function, compensation and surface indicators become the primary basis of judgment. The evaluation of judicial work is thus often confined to what is formally paid and officially recorded, without regard to the realities within which that work is performed.

Salary revision for judicial officers is consistently resisted by the bureaucracy and the legislature. Even after the Supreme Court intervened in the All India Judges' Association cases and structured service conditions, implementation has remained delayed and contested. Pay revisions are rarely implemented on time. While other government officials receive benefits in due course, judicial officers often receive them years later, and that too after prolonged contest. Even then, payments are diluted through restrictive interpretations by finance and administrative authorities. Though the Supreme Court may act as a formal protector of the district judiciary, at the level of immediate control, such entitlements are frequently treated with resistance.

Officers of the district judiciary also enter public discourse on the question of holidays, often portrayed through the lens of extended summer vacation. This perception, however, does not reflect the manner in which such leave is actually structured or availed. Court vacations are staggered, with officers typically receiving only a limited portion—often around 10 to 12 days—within a rotational system that ensures continuous functioning of courts. A comparable number of days exists within the structure of government service itself in the form of fourth Saturdays, which cumulatively account for roughly the same period over a year. A substantial portion of weekends, including second Saturdays, is in practice consumed by training programmes, Lok Adalats, legal awareness camps, and administrative responsibilities. These engagements operate alongside the continuous obligation of preparing judgments and managing pending work, rendering what appears as formal leave functionally interwoven with institutional duties. Even officers entrusted with protocol responsibilities do not operate with uninterrupted or fully availed leave structures. The perception of extended judicial leisure thus rests on a misunderstanding of a system where formal vacation is limited in practice and substantially absorbed within institutional work.

In contrast, a trivial mistake by a judicial officer is met with exemplary action, not merely for correction but to set an example. The officer spends the entire career under constant apprehension, with advancement hinging significantly on the discretion of authority. There is little meaningful autonomy, no individuality, nor any collective institutional voice. Expression itself is constrained; even articulation of concern or dissent carries risk. At the same time, the officer remains exposed to complaints from the bar, litigants, and staff, becoming the most accessible point of accountability in the system. In effect, the officer functions within a framework where responsibility concentrates downward, while voice and protection remain limited.

There is a distinct physical and institutional vulnerability. In most postings, advocates, litigants—including accused persons—and staff are local; the judicial officer alone is an outsider. Every judicial act—conviction, eviction, or denial of relief—creates an aggrieved party. In such an environment, the officer functions under constant apprehension, often without meaningful security support and with limited cooperation from the district administration.

The gherao of a judicial officer in Malda district on April 1, 2026, during the SIR exercise further reflects this vulnerability, where inaction and apathy of the district and state administration necessitated intervention by the Chief Justice of India for rescue. Such incidents are not aberrations. Even where they do not culminate in visible events, the apprehension of similar hostility forms part of the everyday working reality. If systematically recorded, there would emerge numerous instances of obstruction, restraint, intimidation, assault, and even death—yet none of this finds place in any formal statistical record. The killing of Judge Uttam Anand brought national attention but is not an isolated reality.

The constraint is not merely professional but personal. Judicial officers are not simply posted; they are effectively confined within their place of posting. Movement beyond a prescribed distance invites administrative consequence, and even within that radius, restraint is advised in the name of discipline and integrity. Over time, this produces a life of restricted movement—where caution replaces normalcy and personal freedom stands significantly curtailed.

In this entire framework, judicial work is treated as mere duty. There is no data capturing the conditions under which that duty is performed. Consequently, there is no empirical basis on which the capacity of judicial officers is assessed.

However, where evidence does emerge, it tells a different story. The recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise offers one such illustration. Despite India having one of the largest and most structured bureaucratic systems—widely regarded as among the most elite—the system did not repose sufficient confidence in its own administrative machinery to execute the task independently, and judicial officers were deputed instead, despite the risks involved and with little room for refusal. Merely 700 judicial officers across Odisha, West Bengal, and Jharkhand processed nearly 60 lakh cases within a month, averaging close to 9,000 cases per officer, a scale of work that would ordinarily engage the entire bureaucratic apparatus.

If this is not evidence of capacity, what is? This is not merely output; it reflects discipline, integrity, and institutional reliability under pressure. Yet, in the absence of structured data capturing these realities, incapacity is readily presumed. Where performance is actually measurable, that presumption does not sustain.

The Bypass of Adjudication

We celebrate the visible—the surgeon's steady hand, the engineer's rising skyline, the farmer's harvest—yet law often appears invisible, mistaken for abstraction. But imagine its absence: a stranger takes what is yours, and no system responds. In that silence, every other discipline collapses into irrelevance. It is then we recognise that law is not merely a field of study; it is the unseen condition that makes all other achievement possible—the quiet architecture of human dignity, the force that turns a collection of individuals into a civilisation.

The responsibility to preserve this structure rests upon the Courts—institutions Constitutionally conceived for that purpose. What is visible today, however, is not reinforcement, but diversion.

The State has not addressed the structural causes that burden the district judiciary—vacancies, inadequate infrastructure, weak enforcement, and administrative non-cooperation—though these lie entirely within its control. The system remains strained and under-resourced, yet fully accountable for delay. This is not incidental. The ordinary civil and criminal framework of courts sustains the basic structure of society—regulating rights, resolving conflict, and maintaining order. Yet this domain remains congested, even as areas aligned with executive and economic priorities are selectively refined. Instead of strengthening this framework, parallel pathways are progressively created—diverting high-value and revenue-centric disputes from regular courts into statutory forums with limited constitutional insulation. These adjudicatory bodies, being creations of statute rather than the Constitution, function within a framework where appointment, tenure, and service conditions are determined by the executive. The result is the emergence of a gated legal structure alongside the judiciary, narrowing the space within which judicial independence operates. In this shift, disputes central to social order remain within an overburdened system, while those linked to revenue and economic interest move into expedited forums, altering both the balance and the purpose of adjudication.

This shift is reflected in recent legal design. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2025 introduces creditor-led, out-of-court settlements, shifting decision-making from adjudication to private negotiation and reducing the court's role to formal endorsement. Mandatory pre-institution mediation under the Mediation Act and the Commercial Courts framework similarly filters disputes before they reach courts, often resolving them without judicial engagement. Statutory exclusions of civil court jurisdiction, along with the expansion of specialised tribunals and proposals for exclusive arbitration forums, further narrow the role of regular courts in matters of economic significance.

Parallel to this institutional movement is the normalization of extra-judicial outcomes. Instant demolitions and encounter-based actions reflect a growing preference for immediacy over procedure, reinforcing the perception that formal adjudication is dispensable. Such actions are often endorsed, in part because their immediate targets are few and frequently characterised as anti-social elements. But once punishment begins to operate outside the framework of law, it does not remain exceptional. What begins as an exception becomes a method. The power that bypasses law does not remain confined; it expands—first rendering law subordinate, and eventually, society itself.

What shifts, often imperceptibly, is the balance of power. As adjudication is bypassed and process is shortened, authority begins to displace institutional restraint. Power expands at the cost of law, securing both legitimacy and revenue, while the judiciary is reduced to a footnote. In many respects, that shift is already underway.

The consequence is not merely delay. It is dilution.

What is described as judicial pendency, when examined in its structural context, is not a measure of judicial failure. The delays that accumulate before the court arise largely from interruptions that originate outside it—in investigation, in service, in execution and in the expanding volume of State-generated litigation —yet are recorded within it as judicial backlog. Even the question of capability rests on an absence of context rather than evidence; the conditions under which the district judiciary functions remain unmeasured, while its output is continuously judged. When responsibility is assigned without reference to control, and capability is questioned without reference to conditions, accountability itself loses meaning—so it is a case of misattribution.

The persistence of this misattribution, however, is not incidental. It is sustained by the narrative that it produces. When the institution designed to restrain the exercise of power is perceived as inefficient, the case for bypassing it strengthens. Alternatives that promise immediacy—whether through parallel forums or extra-judicial methods—begin to appear preferable, not because they are just, but because they are expedient. In this shift, misattribution becomes functional: it redirects scrutiny away from the sources of delay and enables the expansion of power by weakening the very structures meant to check it. What appears as a problem of pendency thus becomes a pathway to its circumvention.

Author is a Lawyer. Views are personal.