Vacancy of Judges in 23 out of 25 High Courts hit speedy disposal of cases

Rising pendency of cases in all the 25 high courts of the country has remained a cause of worry for the entire judiciary. One of the major factors contributing to the increasing pendency of court cases is the vacancy of judges in different high courts.

As per latest official figures available as of March 28, 2025, the Allahabad High Court leads all the high courts in terms of maximum vacancy of judges. Against a sanctioned strength of 160 judges, 79 judges were present leaving more than half of the sanctioned posts of judges vacant.

Official data as on April 01, 2025 revealed, against the sanctioned strength of 1122 Judges in all the 25 High Courts of the country, only 766 Judges were present while 355 posts (35%) of judges were vacant. Recommendations against 216 vacancies were yet to be received from the High Court Collegiums, revealed the report tabled in parliament.
Between May 2014 and February 04, 2025, revealed a report, a total of 67 Judges had been appointed in the Supreme Court besides 1034 Judges were appointed to various High Courts of the country.

The other high courts of the country bagging a place in the top list of courts with maximum vacancies include the Punjab & Haryana high court which against a sanctioned strength of 85 judges had 53 posts filled up while the remaining 32 posts were vacant. The Bombay High Court stood on third spot with maximum vacancies of 28 judges against a sanctioned strength of 94, while the Calcutta High Court had 27 vacant posts of judges against sanctioned strength of 72. Further, the Gujarat High Court had the fifth maximum vacancy of 20 judges as against a sanctioned strength of 51 followed by the Delhi High Court having 21 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 60.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court, as per reports, had 19 vacancies of judges against the sanctioned strength of 53 for the seventh spot on the list while Patna High Court had 16 vacancies against sanctioned strength of 53 posts.

The ninth maximum count of vacancy of 14 judges was recorded in Orissa High Court against sanctioned strength of 33 posts while the tenth spot on the list had three claimants with 12 vacancies each including Telangana High Court, Karnataka High Court and the Rajasthan High Court respectively.

The other high courts of the country with respective vacancy of judges include J&K and Ladakh High Court (10), Jharkhand (10), Madras (10), Andhra Pradesh (7), Chhattisgarh (6), Gauhati (5), Himachal Pradesh (5), Kerala (3), Manipur (2), Uttarakhand (2) and Tripura (1).

Only two High Courts of the had no vacancy of judges which include Meghalaya and Sikkim.

As per the Indian Justice Report 2025, the pendency levels of cases in High Courts were worse than in subordinate courts.

Across all 25 High Courts, the share of cases pending for more than five years stood at 51%. While High Courts of Tripura, Sikkim and Meghalaya fared the best on this metric, the worst were the High Courts of Allahabad and Punjab & Haryana, where over 60% cases have been pending for over five years, mentioned the report.

Of the total pendency of cases in Allahabad High Court, further revealed the report, 36.9% were pending for 0 to 5 years while 23.1% cases had been pending for 10 to 20 years. Further, 40.1 % of such cases were pending for over 20 years.

It may be mentioned that appointment of Judges of Constitutional Courts was a continuous, integrated and collaborative process between the Executive and the Judiciary which required consultation and approval from various constitutional authorities both at state and central level.

Appointments of judges in the Supreme Court and High Courts are governed by Articles 124, 217 and 224 of the Constitution. As per the MoP, initiation of proposal for appointment of Judges in the High Courts vests with the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court. The Chief Justice of the High Court is required to initiate the proposal for filling up of the vacancy of a High Court Judge six months prior to the occurrence of vacancy. All the names recommended by the High Court Collegium are sent with the views of the Government to the Supreme Court Collegium (SCC) for advice.
Only those persons, who are recommended by the SCC are appointed as Judges of High Courts.

Top 10 High Courts with maximum vacancy of Judges