Chief Justice N V Ramana leaves behind a 6.1% increase in pending cases

On August 26, as Justice Nuthalapati Venkata Ramana demitted his office as the Chief Justice of India, he apologised for not paying requisite attention to the listing and posting of matters. In April 2021, when Justice NV Ramana took oath as the 48th Chief Justice of India, 67,279 cases were pending in the Supreme Court. High Courts across the country had 21 per cent of cases pending for over a decade. At a conference in London this year, the chief justice had termed the huge backlog of cases a major problem—over 40 million cases are pending in courts—pendency has increased during his tenure. As he demits office, Supreme Court's pendency has increased 6.1 per cent to 71,411 cases, and there are 22.1 per cent cases pending for over a decade in the country's high courts.
 

While his record in appointments matches his predecessor ex-CJI SA Bobde, he could not break the deadlock with the government in appointments. Analysis of appointment orders shows that during his 16-month term, Justice Ramana made 241 appointments to the High Courts, against the 243 appointments made by Justice Bobde in his 18 months as CJI. Speaking at a function organised by the Bar Council of India in September last year, the Chief Justice had aimed to fill 90 per cent of all the vacancies in the succeeding month. High Court appointments require approval from the collegium and clearance from the government. The CJI on October 2 remarked that the government had approved a very small number of the recommendations put forward by the collegium.

A Business Standard analysis found that 34 per cent of the 1,108 sanctioned positions at the courts were vacant. 

However, his track record in appointing female judges is better. Of the currently serving four women judges at the Supreme Court, Justice Ramana-led collegium selected three. The Chief Justice had pushed for 50 per cent representation of women in the judiciary and called it their 'right' and not an act of 'charity', but gender representation in the judiciary remains highly skewed. The analysis found that one in six appointees to the High Courts was a female during his tenure—39 were appointed between April 2021 and August 2022.
 

In High Courts, 13.2 per cent of the judges are women, and in the apex court, women form 12.5 per cent of the total strength.

A day before his retirement, CJI Ramana presided over the hearing of some high-profile cases, including a plea challenging the remission granted to 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case and the petitions asking for a wider investigation into allegations of surveillance using the Pegasus spyware.