Madurai Bench disposed of over 3 lakh cases in 10 Years – RTI reply
28 Dec, 2013
The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that though the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court has cleared more than 3 lakh cases in past ten years, the bench still has over 70,000 cases pending with it.
The reply to the application, provided by the Madurai Bench Assistant Registrar (Administration), shows that 60,612 civil suits were entertained by the court up to September 2013 out of which 48,613 have been disposed of. It reply said that 1,58,236 criminal cases, including revisions, were taken up for hearing by the bench and 1,50,928 cases have already been decided. The data provided in the reply also showed that of the 1,30,007 writ petitions filed in the bench 1,00,281 have been disposed of. Similarly 5,893 cases of contempt of court were heard by the bench and 4,783 of them have been closed.
However, regarding number of pending cases, the reply said that over 70,000 cases were still lying pending with the bench. Out of these, 28,950 were civil suits, 12,727 were criminal cases, 28,137 were writ petitions and 1,115 contempt of court cases.
Legal experts believe that though the rate of disposal is lower than that in benches of other high courts, it is still phenomenal when lack of staff in the bench is taken into account. Though the requirement of the bench, which has jurisdiction over 12 districts, is at least five permanent judges, it currently has only one permanent judge. Apart from judges, other administrative sections of the bench also have clear shortage of staff.