SHIVAMOGGA: Karnataka’s subordinate courts have 22,61,280 pending cases, ranking the state sixth in the country. The Karnataka High Court has an additional 3,31,468 cases waiting, making it the seventh most burdened high court in India.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal, replying to an unstarred question from Davanagere MP Dr Prabha Mallikarjun in the Lok Sabha at the ongoing budget session of Parliament, said case disposal remains the judiciary’s domain, but the government is committed to supporting faster justice delivery.
The figures, drawn from the National Judicial Data Grid and current as of March 23, placed the national subordinate court backlog at over 4.86 crore cases. High courts together carry 63,95,572 pending cases, and the Supreme Court 92,782.
Uttar Pradesh leads all states with over 1.19 crore pending cases in subordinate courts. Maharashtra 59.61 lakh cases, West Bengal with 39.22 lakh, Bihar with 37.09 lakh and Rajasthan with 25.96 lakh are ahead of Karnataka.
The minister pointed to Phase III of the e-Courts Mission Mode Project, running from 2023 to 2027 with an allocation of Rs 7,210 crore, as its primary intervention.Over 660 crore pages of court records have been digitised, 2,444 eSewaKendras established and over 3.97 crore hearings conducted through video-conferencing. Approximately, 1.07 crore cases have been filed electronically through the eFiling platform.
Live streaming of proceedings has expanded to 11 high courts.Meghwal said the government plans to deploy artificial intelligence and optical character recognition tools for case analysis and forecasting.
On judicial appointments, he said 72 judges were appointed to the Supreme Court between May 2014 and February 2026. During the same period, 1,164 new judges were appointed to high courts and 820 additional judges were made permanent. The sanctioned strength of high court judges rose from 906 in 2014 to 1,122.