Amid Covid surge, Punjab and Haryana HC to shift to virtual hearings from Jan 5

As per the order, the present system of filing, listing and mentioning of cases will continue. Meanwhile, the decision to list fresh ordinary cases in the month of January, passed on December 23 last year, will be kept in abeyance.

Meanwhile, the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, has also sent a communiqué to all the district and session judges of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, to take appropriate measures at their own level regarding hearing of cases through video-conferencing /hybrid/ physical mode in consultation with administrative judge, the district administration and district bar associations, subject to assessment of prevailing conditions of Covid-19 restrictions imposed in this regard.

447893 cases pending at High Court, most of them 5-10 year old. On January 1 this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had a pendency of 447893 cases, which includes 282933 civil cases and 164960 criminal cases, data showed.

As per the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), the pendency includes the data of miscellaneous applications and further process of reconciliation of data is under process.

The data of NJDG reveals that among the pending cases in the High Court, the maximum — 23.51% or 1,05,320 cases — were matters that were filed 5-10 years ago.

The NJDG site also indicates that among pending cases, 56,022 (12.51%) are cases that are a year old, 95,212 (21.26%) cases that are one to three years old, 88,655 (19.79%) cases that are pending for three to five years, 89,340 (19.95%) cases that are pending for 10 to 20 years, and 13,344 (2.98%) matters that are pending for mroe than 20 years at the High Court.

The HC benches had been working in a restricted manner since the outbreak of Covid in 2020. From September 6 last year, limited in-person hearings had been resumed after the number of cases came down.