Nearly six lakh cases are pending for a decade or more in various high courts and the Bombay High Court leads the tally with over one lakh litigations, according to latest figures collected by a monitoring system which seeks to identify and reduce pendency. A total of 40.15 lakh cases were pending in the 24 high courts of the country at the end of 2016 and the cases which are 10 years old or more constitute 19.45 per cent of the total pendency.

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According to data available on the national judicial data grid, as on December 7, as many as 5,97,650 cases were pending disposal in 20 high courts for a decade or more. Though there are 24 high courts, data of some of the courts, including the Allahabad High Court, was not available. The Bombay High Court leads the list with 1,29,063 pending cases. These include 96,596 civil, 12846 criminal cases and 19,621 writs.

A writ petition is a court petition for extraordinary review, asking a court to intervene in a lower court’s decision. The Punjab and Haryana High Court is second in the list of pending cases which are over 10 years old. A total of 99,625 cases, including 64,967 civil, 13,324 criminal and 21,334 writs are awaiting disposal there. The Calcutta High Court faces a pendency of 74,315 cases awaiting disposal for the past years or more.

According to the data, these include 40,529 civil, 14,898 criminal cases and 1,888 writs. Pending cases in the high courts were pegged at 41.52 lakh at the end of 2014. In December, 2015, the pendency went down to 38.70 lakh. But at the end of 2016, the cases went up to 40.15 lakh, but were less than the pendency in 2014.