Dikhyaa Mohanty 
With a view to bringing the performance of State Judiciary to public domain the High Court of Orissa has been publishing the case statistics on its website. With the end of the first half of 2023, the High Court has published the case statistics of the period from January to June which reflects the performance of the judiciary.
Details such as period-wise institution, disposal and pendency of cases, judgement delivered, time devoted to judicial work in terms of working hours, case clearance rate (CCR) of the first half of 2023 along with comparative analysis of the statistics of corresponding periods of 2021 and 2022 of the High Court and the District Courts have been published.
The statistics also reflects the rate of increase in disposal in the first half of 2023 in comparison with that of the first halves of 2022 and 2021.
Cases are disposed of in the High Court by way of orders as well as judgments. The number of judgements delivered by the High Court during the first halves of 2021, 2022 and 2023 are as above.
It can be seen from the first-half yearly statistics of 2021, 2022 and 2023 that irrespective of the institution of cases, the disposal has steadily grown every year and it has been the highest in the first half of 2023. While 49,635 cases have been instituted and 62,869 cases have been disposed of in the first half of 2023 at a case clearance rate of 126.66%, 53,155 cases were instituted and 59,850 cases disposed of at a case clearance rate of 112.59% in the first half of 2022 and further, 42,278 cases had been instituted and 39,259 cases disposed of at a case clearance rate of 92.85% in the first half of 2021.
The disposal in the months of May and June of 2023 dropped as the High Court was in summer vacation and only the vacation courts were functioning during the period. However, even excluding these two months which had vacation, the case clearance rate from January to April of 2023 has been 141.71%. On comparison of the statistics of the first halves of 2022 and 2023 it can be seen that 3,019 more cases have been disposed of in the first half of 2023 with a net 14.66% improvement in case clearance rate.
It can be seen from the statistics that the rate of increase in disposal in 2021 in comparison to that of 2020 had been 42.58%, the rate of increase in disposal in 2022 in comparison to that of 2021 was 52.44% and the rate of increase in disposal in 2023 in comparison to that of 2022 has been 5.04%.
The numbers of judgments delivered by the High Court in the first halves of 2021, 2022 and 2023 have also steadily grown every year. While 1,368 judgments have been delivered in the first half of 2023, the number of judgments delivered in 2021 and 2022 were 341 and 982 respectively.
The half yearly statistics of the High Court for the first half of 2023 has been encouraging due to substantial increase in disposal as well as case clearance rate. This has resulted in steep decline in the pendency of cases in the High Court which has come down to 1,46,582 as on 30th June, 2023 from 1,89,847 cases as on 30th June, 2022.
The steady improvement in performance of the High Court can be attributed to various factors such as the increase in number of Judges, the e-initiatives of recent years and more particularly, considerable reduction in loss of working hours. Abstention from court work by Bar, reference on demise of Judges and lawyers and leaves of Judges have been the major factors contributing to loss of judicial hours in yesteryears.
However, after the orders dated 12th December, 2022 and 14th December, 2022 of Hon’ble Supreme Court in TP(C) No. 2419 of 2019 (M/s. PLR Projects Pvt. Ltd. v. Mahanadi Coal Fields and others) the scenario has changed and since January, 2023 there has been no abstention from work by the Bar and considerable decline in loss of judicial hours due to references on the demise of Judges and lawyers.
