Experts Explain | Why India’s courts are slow: the need for court managers
Court delays in India continue to rise as the Supreme Court urges states and High Courts to professionalise court administration through court managers.
A view of Supreme Court in New Delhi.
(Express Photo by Amit Mehra)
Written by Shagun Suryam and Laveesh Bhandari
Delays in Indian courts are a widely acknowledged and often (albeit inadequately) measured challenge that permeates everyday life. In addition to mammoth individual costs, delays carry serious economic consequences: tying up money, raising the cost of doing business, discouraging investment, and putting sustained pressure on public resources. There is limited research quantifying these impacts, but some estimates suggest they could amount to as much as 1.5 to 2 per cent of India’s GDP.
With more than 5 crore pending cases across the country’s legal system, the scale of the problem is undeniable, and it appears to be worsening with time. Delays are shaped by an interplay of factors, including how cases enter the system, how they are handled within it, and how the institutions they interact with function. Causes have been assigned by a multitude of studies to factors ranging from poorly framed laws, lack of adequate staff, infrastructure, practices etc.
A key factor in this chain is the chronic and ever-present lack of professional administrative support. Courts are not just sites of adjudication but large, complex institutions that require effective management — much of this responsibility has long fallen on judges themselves. High quality administrative support can help take more superior decisions, free up their time, and help in the overall efficiency of the judicial process.
Efforts to address this problem date back to the 13th Finance Commission (2010–2015). Recognising that judges were overburdened with non-judicial work, the Commission recommended the creation of a dedicated cadre of court managers, professionally trained individuals with MBAs, at both district courts and High Courts. It allocated ₹300 crore as a one-time, five-year grant to support this initiative.
The idea was straightforward: court managers would handle functions such as case-flow management, human resources, infrastructure maintenance, and performance monitoring, allowing judges to focus on their core function: deciding cases. In practice, however, implementation was uneven and limited.
During the five-year grant period, only a small portion of the allocated funds was utilised with some sources suggesting the number was as low as 13 per cent. A handful of states, including Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Rajasthan, did appoint Court Managers, largely on contractual or ad hoc terms. But by March 2015, when the 13th Finance Commission period ended, only around 128 such positions had been filled nationwide.
The situation only worsened after central funding ended and financial responsibility shifted to states, leaving High Courts to decide whether to continue the scheme. In many cases, the absence of dedicated funding led to these positions being discontinued altogether
However, the failure was multi-layered, and not just about funding. Structurally, the scheme was never institutionalised as a permanent cadre, leaving it vulnerable once central support ended. Institutionally, resistance persisted: many judges were reluctant to part with administrative functions long seen as integral to their role and court managers were often viewed as outsiders, even by court staff.
These tensions were compounded by design gaps such as unclear roles and the absence of standardised performance measures. A further challenge lay in a mismatch between professional training and institutional needs – most appointees had general management backgrounds but little exposure to how courts function, leaving them under-equipped to support judicial work. Together, these factors meant that the reform faltered because it lacked the institutional capacity required to sustain it.
As a result, judges have continued to spend significant time on administrative responsibilities, slowing case disposal and contributing to mounting backlogs. The Supreme Court has now revisited this issue, after first issuing clear directions on court managers as far back as August 2018. In a May 2025 order, it expressed concern over the failure to implement earlier directions and directed all High Courts to frame or update service rules within three months, with the state government being given another three months to approve these rules.
As long as judges remain burdened with managerial functions, the benefits of other systemic reforms, such as digitisation, will remain limited. Creating a robust, permanent cadre of court managers and clearly separating judicial and administrative functions remains one of the most straightforward and high-impact reforms available as long as it is done with judicial design in mind. The Supreme Court has laid out both the framework and the timeline. The real test now lies in whether states and High Courts can institutionalise these changes and move court administration from ad hoc to professional.
Laveesh Bhandari is President and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), a think tank in New Delhi. Shagun Suryam is a Research Analyst in the President’s office at CSEP.
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