New Delhi: Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, who gave up his roaring practice as a lawyer in July 2014 to become directly a Supreme Court judge, rued in open court on Friday on the “crushing” burden of cases on the SC judges. Fifth in the hierarchy, he opened up when a lawyer pressed for urgent listing of a case: “The burden on us is crushing. Please go before the Vacation Bench.” He also turned down mentioning in some other cses. When another lawyer pressed for listing the matter that has been de-listed, Justice Nariman quipped: “Sorry. We have no control over listing and de-listing.”
As on May 1, the number of cases pending before the apex court was 58,168. Of these, 38,856 are the admission matters and 21,312 regular hearing matters. The statistics released by the SC registry also reveal that 12,914 of these matters are such that they cannot be listed before the court for hearing. As many as 558 constitutional bench matters are pending before the court, justifying suggestions to make the apex court a purely constitutional court.
