Cuttack: Orissa High Court, which has a sanctioned 27 posts of judges, is at present functioning with only 15 judges, including the Chief Justice while two more Judges will superannuate within six months.
Under this backdrop legal practitioners and litigants are pressing hard for filling up all the vacant posts of Judges at the earliest.
So far as pendency of cases is concerned experts are stressing upon raising the sanction post to 42.
As per statistics of National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) as on date at least 1,72,123 cases are pending before Orissa High Court out of which 53,046 are criminal matters.
Among the pending cases 45,665 are 5-10 years old whereas 27,841 are 10-20 years old. There are also 4,421 cases of 20-30 years old and that apart 833 cases are awaiting adjudication for more than 30 years, said sources.
NJDG sources further states that 27,097 cases are pending in the High Court for 3-5 years, 34,046 cases for 1-3 years and 32,220 cases are waiting adjudication for less than one year period.
If cases of the already abolished Odisha Administrative Tribunal (OAT) are transferred, the litigation burden of Orissa High Court is likely to cross 2.5 lakh mark by the end of 2021, the sources said.
Last month 10,364 cases were instituted before Orissa High Court whereas during this period 7,574 cases were disposed of.
On one hand number of litigations is increasing whereas in other hand good number of post of Judges is lying vacant for years long, which comes as a hurdle to render timely Justice.