New Delhi: Does increasing the number of judges actually reduce pendency? The question has gained renewed relevance following the Union Cabinet’s approval to raise the sanctioned strength of Supreme Court judges from 34 to 38, with the stated aim of enabling the top court to function more “efficiently and effectively” and deliver speedier justice.
Sources told ThePrint that the proposal to increase the sanctioned strength was sent to the government by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, who intends to have a permanent Constitution bench in the top court. The proposal was sent in March this year.
With the Supreme Court having 22 five-judge bench matters, 5 seven-judge bench matters and 2 nine-judge bench matters pending, according to the National Judicial Data Grid, the aim is to hold continuous Constitution Bench hearings throughout the year without disrupting the top court’s other daily hearings and case disposals.
The move to raise the SC’s strength, to be formalised through the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026, comes at a time when the apex court is facing a whopping pendency of close to 93,000 cases.
In 1986, when the Supreme Court’s strength was increased to 26 judges from 17 (including the CJI)—the pendency stood at 1,38,190.
In 2008, when the strength was increased to 31, the pendency stood at 45,887. In 2019, when the strength was increased to 34 supreme court judges, the pendency stood at 59,695.
In 2026 now, when the strength is proposed to be increased to 38, including the CJI—the pendency stands close to 93,000.
Historical data shows a non-linear trend: pendency fell after 1986 but has risen again despite the increase in the number of judges in 2008 and 2019.
Senior advocate Vijay Hansaria believes that this move will not substantially help “looking at the number of pendency we have” and the SC will have to use some other formula to deal with the problem of pendency.
Jyotika Randhawa, a senior resident fellow with the Justice, Access, and Lowering Delays (JALDI) team at Vidhi, noted that increasing the strength of judges has not actually reduced pendency, saying that backlog has continued to rise despite periodic expansions.
This, they argue, indicates that the problem lies elsewhere.
“Some reform is needed looking at the rising pendency, but increase in judge strength is not it”. Randhawa said.
She said the court needs to return to its core function. “The court should go back to what its role is within the Indian judiciary—to interpret and clarify the law of the land rather than looking at each individual case and resolving each of them,” she said.
In fact, speaking to the press after an event on Wednesday, CJI Surya Kant was asked if the number 38 is sufficient. He replied saying “this is a policy matter”.
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The process
As per the established procedure, the Central government will now introduce The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026 in Parliament. After the bill is passed, the top court will have the strength for 38 judges post appointments via the collegium system.
The expansion of the Supreme Court has been gradual. These changes were carried out through amendments to the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1956. The strength of the Supreme Court was increased to 13 by an amendment in 1960, and 17 by a subsequent amendment in 1977.
The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 1986 further increased the strength of the top court, excluding the CJI, from 17 to 25. Subsequently, in 2008, the central government brought in yet another amendment to increase the strength of the Supreme Court to 30.
The strength of the Supreme Court was then increased from 30 to 33 – excluding the CJI by a further amendment.
The scenario in high courts
Since most cases originate in district courts, Hansaria noted that delays at the district level inevitably feed into higher court pendency. “District delays are even more, and there has been no corresponding increase in the strength of district court judges,” he said, questioning whether reforms at the top alone can deliver meaningful results.
“At the Supreme Court level, fortunately, we have almost full strength at all points of time. There is not much vacancy,” he said. This, in his view, reinforces the argument that simply increasing judge numbers is not the primary solution.
The strength of high courts is not increased through a single central amendment like in the Supreme Court, but court-wise based on workload and recommendations with periodic revisions by the Central government.
As a result, different High Courts have varying sanctioned strengths – for instance, larger courts like Allahabad or Bombay have significantly higher sanctioned judge strength of 160 and 94, respectively. In comparison, smaller High Courts like those of Sikkim and Meghalaya have 3 and 4 judges, respectively.
It is crucial to note that even though the Allahabad HC has a total strength of 160, it has only 109 working judges as of April 2026—a pattern seen in other high courts as well where vacancies are too many and the sanctioned strength is often not achieved.
As of early 2026, against a total sanctioned strength of 1,122 judges across HCs, 371 posts remain vacant.
With nearly one in four positions unfilled, this gap has led to further pendency and pressure on sitting judges.
A total of 63,61,340 cases are pending in various high courts in India, according to the National Judicial Data Grid. The highest pendency is in the Allahabad High Court: 11,93,346.
The Rajasthan HC has 6,71,842, the Bombay HC has 6,62,050, and the Madras HC has 5,53,144 cases backlogged. The Calcutta HC has 2,04,633 cases pending.
Among smaller states, Meghalaya has 1,783 while Sikkim has 296 cases pending.
Increasing vacancies
Sanctioned strength has not always translated into actual working strength.
Notably, despite the 1977 increase to 17, the effective working strength remained capped at 15 judges until 1979 due to executive restrictions as appointments were not made in the 2 emergency years.
In 1987, the Law Commission recommended increasing judge strength from 10.5 judges per million population to 50 judges per million, a benchmark that the Supreme Court reiterated in its 2002 judgement directing the government to increase the judge strength from the existing ratio of 13 judges per 10 lakh people to 50 judges per 10 lakh people within a period of five years.
Nearly four decades, repeated judicial directions and long-standing expert recommendations later, India is nowhere near that target—the country is not even halfway there even as case pendency in district courts has surged.
Put to scale – while the judge-population ratio rose from 17.48 in 2014 to 22 in 2025, pendency across the Indian judiciary climbed from approximately 4.1 million in 2014 to 53 million in 2025.
Randhawa explained how a major driver of the mounting caseload is the court’s special leave jurisdiction.
“The special leave jurisdiction was supposed to be used in very extraordinary cases. But that’s become the norm now,” she observed, linking this shift directly to the current pendency of over 90,000 cases.
The scale of the Supreme Court’s workload stands in stark contrast to global practice. “Globally, apex courts are not taking up all cases that come before them. They limit themselves to constitutionally important matters,” Randhawa said, underscoring how India’s top court functions simultaneously as a constitutional court and a high-volume appellate forum.
Against this backdrop, she cautioned that increasing judicial strength without addressing case inflow risks treating symptoms rather than causes. If the court continues to admit cases at its current scale, adding more judges may improve disposal rates in the short term, but is unlikely to produce sustained reductions in backlog, she added.
Traditionally, judicial strength has been discussed in terms of the judge-to-population ratio. However, Randhawa questioned the relevance of this metric at the level of the Supreme Court, also raising concerns about how the proposed increase in strength has been determined.
Unlike the district judiciary, where population-based metrics may be more applicable, the apex court deals primarily with appeals, public interest litigations, and special leave petitions. “At the level of the Supreme Court, I don’t know if the judge-to-population ratio is a good measure,” she noted.
Instead, a more data-driven approach has been recommended in several institutional reports, including those of the National Court Management System. These approaches focus on analysing disposal rates, case types, and the time required to adjudicate different categories of cases.
“You can look at how many hours it takes to dispose of a specific case type and use that to calculate how many judges are actually needed,” the researcher explained.
Such a method would account for variations in case complexity and provide a more realistic estimate of judicial capacity.
Ultimately, Randhawa argued that the debate needs to shift from numbers to institutional roles. The key question is not just how many judges the Supreme Court should have, but what kind of cases it should hear.
“The court needs to restrict the number of cases it takes up each year and focus on matters of constitutional or public importance,” she said, suggesting that without such a shift, increases in judge strength may continue to offer only limited and temporary relief.
Senior Advocate Hansaria points to procedural delays at the hearing stage as a key driver of pendency in the Supreme Court, arguing that the problem is not merely the number of judges but how cases are handled once they enter the system.
According to him, matters should be categorised early and dealt with accordingly. “If it’s a very small matter – something that can be heard in five or ten minutes – then after notice, it should be heard and decided immediately,” he said, suggesting that such cases should not be allowed to linger unnecessarily.
For more substantial matters, he argues that the court must take a clear procedural call at the outset. “Otherwise, they must admit it and then it should come in its own turn,” he said. At present, he notes, cases often remain stuck at the admission stage for years after notice is issued.
“You will find that once notice is issued, even in the smallest of matters, it takes 10–20 years before it is disposed of,” he pointed out, identifying this as a major contributor to long pendency cycles.
Hansaria proposes strict timelines and discipline in pleadings to address this delay. He also flagged inequities in listing and prioritisation, “big matters and big lawyers are covered, and then the old matters and poorly represented cases are left waiting,” he said, pointing to systemic imbalance in how cases progress through the docket.
“Increasing strength alone will not work. It requires increased infrastructure and adequate subordinate staff,” he said, highlighting that shortages in supporting personnel remain a major bottleneck. “Subordinate staff is a big problem for the district judiciary.”
The immediate priority, according to him, should be to fill existing vacancies and strengthen institutional support systems.
“The first thing has to be that you fill up the existing vacancies and give them sufficient supporting staff so that they can work in a better way,” he said, underlining that without these foundational reforms, any increase in judicial strength at the top is unlikely to produce lasting impact on pendency.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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