January 2025: Pendency increases by over 2600 compared to last January

At the end of January 2025, the Supreme Court recorded 82,445 pending cases. This marked a decrease of 527 cases from December 2024. This decline coincides with the Court’s return to listing regular cases, following a two-month period where only miscellaneous matters were prioritised.

Month-wise breakdown of pendency 

Figure 1 provides a monthly breakdown of pending cases in the Supreme Court from July 2024 to January 2025. Under the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, the Court’s first term begins in July, following the summer break, and concludes just before the winter break. January marks the start of the second term, making it an appropriate point for comparison with the previous term’s opening figures.

In July 2024, the Supreme Court began its term with 84,280 pending cases. By the end of the month, the Court had disposed of over 900 cases, bringing the pendency down to 83,312. The downward trend continued in August, but September saw a slight increase. In October 2024, pendency rose marginally by 99 cases, reaching 83,001.

A significant transition occurred in November 2024, when D.Y. Chandrachud handed over the Chief Justice reins to Sanjiv Khanna. CJI Khanna introduced a listing reform that prioritised miscellaneous matters, which constitute the bulk of the Court’s docket, while temporarily pausing the hearing of regular cases. This strategy led to a drop in pendency, with November closing at 82,347 pending cases and December at 82,972. 

January 2025 saw a full month of hearings, with just three public holidays for New Year and Makar Sankranti. During its 20 working days, the Court disposed of 4,521 cases, averaging 226 cases per day. In comparison, December 2024 had 15 working days, during which 4,418 cases were disposed.

Pendency figures in January in the six preceding years 

Figure 2 tracks the total number of pending cases at the start of each year from January 2019 (pre-pandemic) to January 2025. Data up to January 2024 was sourced from the Indian Judiciary Annual Reports released by the Supreme Court, while the January 2025 figure was collected from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

A consistent increase in pendency is evident over the years. In January 2019, the Supreme Court had 58,029 pending cases, which rose to 59,670 cases in January 2020—an increase of over 1,500 cases.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on pendency, as the Court operated at limited capacity. As a result, pending cases surged to 66,072 in January 2021 and 70,101 cases in January 2022.

The Covid clouds had passed by the time January 2023 rolled around. By the end of that month pendency had spiked to 78,400 cases, but this was largely due to a change in counting methodology introduced by CJI Chandrachud in November 2022. The Supreme Court began including all diarised matters—including Miscellaneous Applications, Unregistered Matters, and Defective Caseș— in its count. To a large extent, that explains the rise in the pendency figure from 69,598 cases in November 2022 to 78,400 in January 2023.

In January 2024, we noticed a return to the pre-pandemic pattern—a rise in over 1500-odd cases from the same month of the previous year. January 2025 saw a relatively steeper rise—the month ended with 2637 pending cases more than in January 2024. 

Constitution Bench pendency 

Figure 3 illustrates the number of Constitution Bench cases pending in the Supreme Court. The donut on the left shows the number of main pending matters whereas the donut on the right shows the tagged pending matters. Tagged matters are cleared once the main matters are decided. 

As of January 2025, 33 Constitution Bench cases remain pending before the Supreme Court. That’s two more cases compared to December 2024. Both of these are five-judge bench matters. 

We anticipate some movement in Constitution Bench pendency soon, as the Court is expected to resume hearings in these cases. Notably, a five-judge bench case concerning the modification of an arbitral award is listed for hearing on 13 February 2025.

Note: Every month, we publish two Court Data stories on the preceding month’s case figures. One of them logs institutions and disposals and the other records pendency. For the pendency story, we report the figure displayed on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) on the last day of the concerned month or the first day of the next month. The disposal figure reported above was collected on the last day of the month (31 January). 

In the institution-disposal story, we report the figures displayed on the 5th of each month. We wait till the 5th because we have noticed that it takes a few days for the NJDG to be updated with the accurate institution-disposal figures for the previous month. We check these figures against the Justice Clock on the Supreme Court website.