Delhi High Court to now sit on first and third Saturdays of every month

In a notification issued by the HC on May 14, 2025, it was declared that the fourth Saturday of every month, which was observed as a holiday for the Registry until then, would be a working day for the Registry thereafter.

The HC on October 4, 2025 announced that following a Full Court meeting on September 22 that year, each bench of the court would observe one Saturday every month as a working day for the calendar year of 2025.

Since the October notification, Saturday sittings have been used by most courts to take up cases that have been pending for years.

The shift comes with a focus on increasing the disposal of cases. The current pendency of cases at Delhi HC stands at 1.25 lakh cases, according to the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG). More than 93,000 of these cases are over a year old, with a majority of the pending 1.25 lakh cases being civil cases (93,138).

The development assumes significance as the HC presently has nearly 22,000 cases pending for over 10 years and another 23,000-odd cases pending for five to 10 years.

Under Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya, who took oath on January 21, 2025, the court saw a significant jump in the disposal of cases—from 5,574 cases disposed of in 2024 to around 19,000 cases in 2025 (18,938).

High Courts across the country usually announce a handful of specific Saturdays that are to be deemed working days to compensate for holidays, and officially remain closed for court proceedings on Saturdays and Sundays otherwise. With 61 holidays and all Sundays and second Saturdays every month marked as offs in the 2026 Delhi HC calendar, the Delhi HC had approximately provisioned for 240 working days.

Meanwhile, the October notification requiring each HC bench to observe one Saturday every month as a court working day for the calendar year of 2025 was met with objections from the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA).

On October 17, 2025, in a representation addressed to the Chief Justice, the Bar alleged that it was not consulted before the decision.

The DHCBA had also noted at the time that the decision affects the “work-life balance” of lawyers. Expressing their “deep concern and disquiet” over the mandate, the lawyers’ body highlighted that even keeping one Saturday working in a month for each bench would still require lawyers’ availability for all Saturdays.

The DHCBA, in its representation, requested that the notification be either kept in abeyance or suggested as an alternative that all benches sit on a fixed Saturday in a month to ensure uniformity.

The latest arrangement partly caters to the DHCBA’s earlier demand for fixed Saturday hearings across all benches to ensure uniformity in the working schedules of lawyers. However, representatives of the DHCBA said they were not consulted by the Bench before issuing the latest decision.