May 2025: Pendency reduces by 67 cases

Pendency in May 2025 closed at 81,734 cases. This is 67 less cases than April 2025. In the same month, the Court received 7513 cases and disposed of 6004 cases. 

As seen in Figure 1, the Court began the year with 82445 cases in January 2025. After five months, the pendency has reduced by 711 cases. 

The Court worked for 16 days in May 2025 as it began its Partial Working Days in its last week, starting from 26 May 2025. 

The Court functioned at a strength of 32 judges until the retirement of Justice A.S. Oka on 24 May 2025. The Court was restored to its sanctioned strength of 34 judges with the appointments of Justices N.V. Anjaria, Vijay Bishnoi and A.S. Chandurkar on 30 May. 

Figure 2 shows the total pendency in cases during May since 2019. The data up to May 2024 is taken from the Indian Judiciary Annual Report. The May 2025 figure is taken from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

This is the first time in six years where pendency has reduced in May. Notably, this also marks where pendency in May has reduced as compared to April. Historically, we have noticed that pendency always spikes in May due to the vacation break that commences at the end of May. This trend has been broken in May 2025. 

May 2024 recorded the highest pendency of cases during this time. There is a spike of cases between May 2022 and May 2023. This was when the Court started including all diarised matters including Miscellaneous Applications, Unregistered Matters, Defective matters.

Constitution Bench pendency

Figure 3 shows the Constitution Bench pendency in May 2025. There has been no change in Constitution Bench matters since April 2025. No Constitution Bench matters were taken up or decided during the month. 

The NJDG website displays the Court’s power to modify an arbitral award as a pending five-judge matter. The judgement was delivered by a Constitution Bench on 30 April 2025. The NJDG is yet to reflect that on its portal. 

Moreover, the portal shows the case regarding the nature of private property as a pending nine-judge matter. It was decided in November 2024. 

7513 cases instituted, 6004 cases disposed

No such discrepancy was observed in the seven-judge matters.

According to Figure 4, May 2025 recorded the highest institution of cases this year so far. The Court also disposed of a substantial number of 6004 cases. This shift comes after the Court recorded the least institution and disposal numbers of the year in April 2025.* 

The clearance rate in May 2025 was at 79.91 percent. This has reduced from April when it was at 86.5 percent. The drop in disposal numbers could be attributed to the Partial Working Days where only five benches, led by the senior most judges of the Court, were constituted.

The Court cleared approximately 375 cases each day during the 16 working days.

Figure 5 shows that the institution and disposal figures were higher than any other year in May 2025. 

May 2021 and 2022 saw a drop due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This increased from May 2022 onwards. Institution and disposals were the least in May 2021 and 2022 respectively.  

*The data for May 2025 was collected from the Justice Clock.

Note: For our pendency, institution and disposal article we primarily rely on the data provided on the NJDG. We would cross check the institution and disposal numbers with the Justice Clock. On the fifth of each month, the institution and disposal numbers on both portals would match. This time, the NJDG website did not display any institution numbers. For the purpose of this article, we have primarily used the data displayed on the Justice Clock for institution and disposal figures.