Markandey
Tareekh par tareekh : a judiciary beyond redemption
Markandey Katju 10 Sep 2026

In my interview by Kapil Sibal, MP and senior advocate, Supreme Court, and former Union Minister, in his show 'Dil se', I said that the Indian judiciary is beyond redemption.
We may only consider one aspect : the delay in deciding cases.
 In the novel ‘Bleak House’ the English novelist Charles Dickens writes in his inimitable style :
'' Jarndyce vs Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least. It has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises.
Innumerable children have been born into the cause, innumerable young people have married into it, innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, without knowing how or why, whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce should have been settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers, a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out, and the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality.

There are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless ''.

Is this not descriptive of the situation prevailing in most Indian courts today ? 

I am informed by Allahabad High Court lawyers that if a case is adjourned after the first date ( because the opposite party or govt. counsel wants to file a reply or for some other reason ) the case will rarely be listed again, unless bribes are given in the High Court Registry. Similar may be the position in many other High Courts.

A former Chief Justice of India, Justice Dattu, said soon after being appointed CJI  that cases in the Supreme Court would be disposed off within 2 years, and cases all over India within 5 years. Almost every CJI makes similar tall claims. Justice Lodha, a former CJI made the inane remark that Judges will work 365 days in a year to clear arrears.

While many people talk of clearing the arrears, no one is really serious about it. Arrears, including arrears in the Supreme Court and High Courts, have kept mounting.

When I was in the Supreme Court, a bench of which I was a member heard a case in 2007, Moses Wilson vs. Kasturiba ( see online ) which had been instituted in 1947, that is after 60 years of its institution.

Another case, Rajendra Singh (dead) thru. Lrs. & Ors. Vs. Prem Mai ( in which I wrote the above quotation from Dickens' novel ), was decided in 2007 by a bench of the Supreme Court, of which I was a member, 50 years after the case was initiated in 1957 in the trial court.

Presently, there are 56.4 million cases pending in all courts in India, of which 47 million are in subordinate courts, 6 million in High Courts, and 96 thousand in the Supreme Court of India ( the rest being in quasi-judicial tribunals ). It is estimated that if no fresh case is filed in our courts, it will take 360 years to clear the present backlog.

In Allahabad High Court ( my parent High Court ), criminal appeals filed 30 years ago are coming up for hearing today ( this is apart from the time taken in the trial court ). The lawyer who filed it is usually dead, and the accused in the criminal case are also often dead or untraceable. The same is the position of civil appeals. I am informed that in the Bombay High Court original suits have been pending for 25 years or more. The situation is like that in the case Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce depicted in Charles Dickens’ novel.

I doubt whether the lawyer community seriously wants any reform, and as for Supreme Court Judges they mostly have a term of only a few years to seriously attempt it ( despite the tall talk of almost every CJI ).

A person who gets involved in litigation is usually weeping and crying after some time as date after date ( tareekh par tareekh ) is given by the Court, but the case is not heard.

When I was a Judge of the Allahabad High Court, the High Court had set a norm that no judge of the subordinate judiciary should have at one time more than 300 cases pending before him. Once a judge of the U.P. subordinate judiciary ( the CJM Kanpur Nagar ) came to meet me, and I asked him how many cases were pending in his court alone. He said 30,000. Another subordinate judiciary judge ( CJM Ghaziabad ) told me he had 21,000). Yet another, CJM Bulandshahr, said 25,000. 

Now if a man can carry 100 pounds weight but an elephant is put on his head what will happen ? He will collapse. And that is precisely what has happened to the Indian judiciary. What else can the poor judge do in these circumstances except give tareekh ( the next date for the case ) after tareekh ? After all, a judge is not a superman, it takes time for him to decide a case. The pleadings are filed, then documentary evidence adduced, then oral evidence ( including cross examination ) given, then the lawyers heard. Thereafter, the judge has to reflect on all this, and only then can a high quality judgment come. 

And this is apart from the massive corruption which has crept into the Indian judiciary.

When I started law practice in the Allahabad High Court in 1971 there was no corrupt judge in the High Court, and perhaps in no High Court in India nor in the Supreme Court ( though corruption had started in the lower judiciary ).

today my estimate is that about 50% of the higher judiciary ( High Court and Supreme Court ) has become corrupt. Mr. Shanti Bhushan, a very senior lawyer of the Supreme Court, and former Union law Minister, had filed a written statement in 2010 in the Supreme Court stating that half of the previous 16 Chief Justices of India were definitely corrupt ( he named them in a sealed envelope which he gave to the Court ), about 2 there was uncertainty, and 6 were definitely honest. And this is about the Chief Justice of India, the head of the Indian judiciary, not a lowly munsif or magistrate.


Since then more Chief Justices of India have retired having serious allegations of corruption and/or other misdeeds against them.

So was I wrong in telling Kapil Sibal that the Indian judiciary is beyond redemption ?


By Justice Markandey Katju, former Judge, Indian Supreme Court


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