NJDG: India court pendency data, free and live

Most people discover the health of their case only through their lawyer. The NJDG exists so you do not have to. It is run under the eCourts project and pulls its numbers straight from the Case Information Software that court establishments use daily, which is what makes it the official, citable source of judicial statistics in India.

• Pending cases — total, split civil and criminal, and broken down by age: less than one year, one to five years, five to ten years, over ten years.
• Disposal — cases disposed, with disposal rates, so you can compare courts rather than just count their backlog.
• State, district and court-establishment drill-down — pick a state, then a district, then an individual court complex.
• Nature of case — civil, criminal, and category views such as cheque cases, land disputes or motor-accident claims, depending on the court.
• Pre-litigation and pre-trial matters — shown separately on the national dashboard.

On 26 August 2026 the national dashboard displayed 5,10,70,663 pending cases in district and subordinate courts — 1,12,74,334 civil and 3,97,96,329 criminal. These are live figures; expect them to move every day.

1. Open njdg.ecourts.gov.in. No account is needed.
2. Choose your state from the map or list, then the district and court establishment.
3. Read the pendency dashboard — total, age-wise, nature-wise.
4. Drill into a case type or age band to see how many cases like yours are queued ahead of you.
5. Many views offer a download of the underlying figures for analysis or for annexing to a complaint.

Two honest readings of this data help litigants. First, an age-band view tells you whether a three-year-old case is normal for that court or an outlier. Second, a court with a huge over-ten-year band is a court whose listing delays are structural — useful context for an application for early hearing, and useful evidence in one.

Kashvi Pathak had a rent dispute pending for over three years. Her lawyer's answer to “how much longer” was a shrug. On the NJDG she looked up her district court, found its age-wise pendency, and discovered that more than half its civil cases were older than hers — her file was moving at the court's normal pace, not stuck through any fault specific to it. She then used the grid's numbers, printed with the date, in an application to the court seeking an earlier hearing on grounds of comparable cases already disposed. The dates and counts came from an official source, which is exactly why the application carried weight.

Where the grid cannot help is inside a single file: why your case was not listed this week, or why an order is unsigned. That is where the RTI Act begins.

Court records are split in two. Judicial records — the case file, orders, judgments — are obtained through court procedure: certified copies, inspection, the court reader. Administrative records — vacancies, infrastructure, listing policy, pendency reconciliations — are disclosable by RTI to the court establishment's PIO. Courts are public authorities under the RTI Act; a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court affirmed in November 2019, in the Subhash Chandra Agarwal case, that even the office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority.

To the Public Information Officer, [court establishment]

1. Number of cases of type [YOUR CASE TYPE] pending in this
   court as on [DATE], with age-wise break-up.
2. Number of such cases disposed in the last 12 months.
3. Reasons my case No. [NUMBER] was not listed on the dates
   [DATES] despite being in the daily board pool.
4. Norms for listing and for causing-listing, and the
   officer responsible for listing in this court.
5. Procedure and fee for certified copies and inspection.

Use the court delay RTI drafter to auto-fill the PIO and your case details.

The grid refreshes from the courts' case-management software, effectively daily. Smaller establishments can lag by a few days after migrations or software updates.

Yes. It is the official national judicial-statistics source under the eCourts project. When you cite it, note the date you accessed it, because the figures change daily.

Pendency is every unresolved case. Backlog usually means the part of pendency older than a chosen threshold — commonly one year. The grid's age bands let you apply either definition.

Some establishments join late or after a system migration. If a court is absent from the grid, an RTI to its establishment asking for pendency as on a fixed date usually produces the figures, and the reply is citable.

• RTI for court case delay
• All eCourts and judicial guides
• Citizen RTI Playbook
• The RTI Playbook book — drafting, appeals and deadlines in one place.

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026.