Justice Nagaprasanna Of Karnataka HC Hears 522 Cases Today, Disposes Around 50 Cases And Passes Around 200 Interim Orders

The Single Judge Bench of Justice M. Nagaprasanna of the Karnataka High Court today took up all 522 cases listed before the Court today by 5 pm. The Judge considered all the matters which were listed in the Cause List after commencing the sitting at its usual time of 10:30 am.

A staggering 522 cases were listed before the Court today, a regular working day, as we had reported on Saturday. Usually, Courts have long cause lists only during vacation sittings which are called out by sitting late after usual working hours.

Out of the 522 cases listed, Justice Nagaprasanna dealt with every single one of them and around 50 matters were disposed and interim orders were passed in about 200 matters. 

In the Cause List before the Court, the majority of matters were Criminal Petitions while Writ Petitions were also listed. As per the data available on the website of the National Informatics Center, the total number of pending cases stands at 2,17,142 at Karnataka High Court out of which pending civil cases stand at 1,76,446 while pending criminal cases are 40,677.

On September 30, last year, the day before the Supreme Court was to commence its Dussehra vacation, the Bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud sat till 9 pm to call out all cases on the board. It came out later through a Supreme Court Collegium's statement that an adjourned meeting of the Collegium was fixed at 4.30 pm on that day and due to the absence of Justice Chandrachud, the proposal initiated by the then CJI U U Lalit for appointments to the Apex Court could not be concluded. 

Recently, the Kerala High Court dismissed a Writ Petition alleging that a Judge of the Kerala High Court limits the Cause List before the Court to only 20 cases per day. The plea alleged that "backlog of cases has broken the back of the Judiciary and if every Judge decides to hear only 20 matters a day, then the Institution itself will not survive". The High Court while dismissing the plea held that the Judge has the discretion to issue special or general directions regarding the posting of cases assigned to the Judge by the Chief Justice.