Kathmandu, February 5

Case disposal rate at the Supreme Court declined by 1.24 per cent this year, reveals the apex court’s annual report submitted to President Bidya Devi Bhandari today.

Although the new constitution has envisaged that there shall be 21 justices, including the chief justice at the Supreme Court, there are only 10 justices, including the chief justice, at present.

According to the report, the SC disposed 6,448 cases out of 28,275 cases ( 22. 80 per cent). In the fiscal year of 2071/072, the apex court had a total of 28,275 cases, including a backlog of 18, 789 cases to adjudicate.

The SC had disposed 24.4 per cent of cases or 5,946 out of 24,735 cases in the previous fiscal year.

According to the report, this year there was a total number of 1,98,855 cases in the Supreme Court, appellate courts and district courts out of which 1,22,311 cases (61.51 per cent) were disposed.

This rate is higher by 3.35 per cent compared the disposal rate in the previous year.

The report states that there was no case in 58 courts of the country that were two-year-old. The SC has, however, 8,800 two-year-old cases.

The SC said in its report that the workload would increase for courts particularly for appellate courts and district court under the new constitution.

The apex court said that its workload was also increasing as there were limited number of justices in the court and it also had to set up a five-member constitutional bench to adjudicate constitutional cases.

The SC said the new constitution failed to ensure even one per cent budget for the judiciary. Chief Justice Kalyan Shrestha had submitted the annual report to the President.