New Delhi, Jan. 4 -- India has 54 million pending cases, 47 million in district courts, 6.3 million in high courts and nearly 90,000 in the Supreme Court, with just 25,000 judges to handle them.

This translates to barely 21 judges per million people, far below the Law Commission's recommended 50 and well short of the US (107) and UK (51).

Vacancies hover around 30% in many high courts and case disposal rates remain sluggish, averaging 1,350 cases per judge annually, versus over 2,000 in OECD jurisdictions.

Each adjournment adds several months to case duration: over 18 million cases are more than three years old and 5 million exceed a decade.

Judicial inefficiency has thus become both a governance and economic problem, conservatively e...