The High Court of Orissa continued the previous year practice of uploading the case statistics on a monthly basis on the official website with an avowed objective of placing the performance of state judiciary in the Public Domain. The case statistics has been prepared in a simplified manner to inculcate all possible parameters in minute details including pendency, institution vis-à-vis disposal statistics, time devoted to judicial work including loss of Judicial hours due to references held on account of sad demise of Advocates and Judges, Judges on leave, administrative duties, training, etc. Further, the case statistics reveals the Case Clearance Rate (CCR) which provides the rate at which the cases are disposed of taking into account the institution of the cases for a given period. The working hours for a given period has been computed taking into account the number of hours required to be devoted in a working day multiplied by the working strength of the judges and the number of working days during the period. At times, it may be noticed that there is minor discrepancy in the statistics in respect of closing balance of a period and the opening balance of the succeeding period. Such marginal discrepancy occurs due to subsequent updation of disposal and restoration of some cases in the Case Information System (CIS). In order to analyze the rate of disposal in comparison with the previous year, a detail comparative analysis chart has also been prepared and uploaded as part of the case statistics to provide various parameters for a deeper insight and analysis of the progress of disposal.

The statistics is based on the information available in Case Information System (CIS) developed by the e-Committee, Hon’ble Supreme Court of India for the High Courts. The decision to upload the case statistics on the website is to make the stakeholders aware of the functioning of the State judiciary and to lay a foundation for better understanding of the institution from a common man’s perspective by inviting inclusiveness and participation. The format of the case statistics have been simplified as far as possible for better appreciation of data analysis. The different information provided in the case statistics has been tailor made considering the requirement of different stakeholder to have better appreciation of the real time performance and functioning of the Courts. Both positives and loopholes have been highlighted in a scrupulous manner with a quest to improve the performance even better in future.

Institution, disposal and pendency of different types of civil and criminal cases in the High Court are indicated below.

The detailed case statistics of the High Court along with relevant information for 2023 are available on the website and given at Appendix-A.

The Case statistics uploaded in the High Court of Orissa throws light on the following parameters:

1. Institution, disposal and the case clearance rate at a glance

The opening balance at the beginning of the year of 2023 was 1,64,771, while the closing balance at the end of the year came down to 1,46,985. Total institution during the year was 1,06,629 and the disposal was 1,19,544 cases at a Case Clearance Rate of 112.11%. The disposal of cases had surpassed the institution in all the months of the year except June, August, September and December. There were lesser number of working days in the month of June and December due to summer vacation and winter holidays of the Court respectively for which the disposal is relatively less in comparison to other months though there was filing of fresh cases during the vacation. There has been steady disposal in all the months with the highest case clearance rate being in the month of January at the rate of 159.96%.

2. Judges’ working strength and loss of working hours

The judge’s strength was highest in the month of January at 22 and hovered around 21 and 20 throughout the year. However, the judges’ strength remained 20 at the end of the year. While 22371.6 hours were devoted towards judicial working of the High Court in the year 2023, 2009.325working hours were lost on account of various reason like absence of judges due to leave, training and administrative duties, references held due to demise of Advocates/ Judges and farewell to judges. As such there was no loss of working hours due to cease work by the Bar as experienced in previous years. Further, references on account of demise of Advocates/Judges were held only once in the month at 3.05 PM thereby significantly cutting down the loss of working hours due to references. It is apt to reflect here that the loss of judicial working hours has considerably gone down in the year 2023 in comparison to the previous year.

3. Comparative analysis of 2022 and 2023

In 2022, 1,36,599 cases were disposed of which came down to 1,19,544 cases in the year 2023. There has been a decrease of 12.49% in disposal in 2023 as compared to the disposal in 2022. The rate of decrease has been calculated taking into account the disposal of 2023 deducted by the disposal of 2022, divided by the disposal of 2022, multiplied by 100. There has been considerable increase in delivery of judgments in the year 2023 as compared to 2022. While 2168 judgments were delivered in 2022, 2813 judgments were delivered in 2023.

Out of the 1,19,544 cases disposed of in 2023, 357 cases were more than 30 years old, 410 cases were 20-30 years old and 3871 cases were 10-20 years old. Further, 98763 cases were disposed of in Single Benches, 20780 cases in Division Benches and 01 case in Larger Benches.

The age wise disposal of cases in Single Benches, Division Benches and Larger Benches is indicated below:

The institution and disposal statistics of the High Court for the last 5 years are indicated below for a comparative analysis.

Pattachitra of Chariot Festival at Puri famously known as “Rath Yatra” displayed at Judges’ Lounge