As expected after the winter court holidays, 2011’s Supreme Court case pendency closed with a spike, which could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the project to reduce pending cases by the end of this financial year.

Legally India’s Pendency Project has made its debut in Mint today, after pending Supreme Court cases in November 2011 reached the highest number ever after increasing by more than 800.

Mint legal correspondent Nikhil Kanekal has surveyed leading Supreme Court counsel to compile a list of the year’s most impact-heavy cases heard by the apex court. Have your say and share your views.

Late last month a young Court Witness’ first special leave petition (SLP) was educated by The Eminent Senior Counsel and disciplined by a slightly less eminent senior counsel, leaving CW in a sweating mess. So, he waited, for the next day that his SLP would finally be heard. Little did he know what lay in store…

The hearing was over in a matter of seconds. The Court issued notice, stayed the High Court’s judgment and even granted us ‘dasti’.

Supreme Court Insider: Verbal explosives were hurled across the aisle during the Sohrabuddin fake encounter hearing in the Supreme Court of India today between additional solicitor general Indira Jaising, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani and former solicitor general Gopal Subramanium.

“)Mint has summarised the revolutionary case pendency stats prepared by the Supreme Court in a concise chart, while Legally India asked two academics researching case pendency for comment on Kapadia’s Law Day speech and the new figures.

Supreme Court Insider: From the start of the trial in the 2G spectrum scam case, the prime accused and main conspirator, former telecom minister A Raja, started a silent protest.

Exclusive: 71 advocates out of around 400 test takers have passed the June 2011 advocates-on-record (AOR) examination, making them part of the oligopoly of at least 1,000 advocates who can file petitions before the Supreme Court. However, the Delhi High Court has now taken up a writ challenging the AOR system and has approached the apex court for guidance.

More than two thirds of cases pending in the Supreme Court – nearly 40,000 – were stuck not because of judges but due to procedural delays, including unpaid fees, unserved notice or documents not filed by counsel, according to detailed data released for the first time by the court as a result of its exercise in cataloguing court delays.

Earlier this week, Court Witness thought he impressed his client by predicting the bench who would hear his treasured special leave petition (SLP), which learned to walk last week after having been nurtured since birth by CW.

CW and client then conspired to put together a winning team of eminent senior counsel and junior senior counsel (from the same state as the judge) to make sure the SLP had a good start to its life. Now the SLP is ready to go to school… Hopefully a good one.

In last month’s column, Court Witness described the labour pains of giving birth to a special leave petition (SLP). But after filing successfully with the goblin-like clerk Bakshi-ji the real work of raising an SLP was apparently only just beginning – now it needs to start taking its first steps…

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The Supreme Court saw the backlog of cases increase by another 80 in a slow holiday-ridden October where almost 3,000 fewer cases were filed than in the previous month. However, in more positive news the apex court has managed to continue its now four-month record of getting cases older than one year off its books.

“Follow me,” said the man with the purple hair as he walked through the open doors into the corridor awash in gloomy, fluorescent light.

Exclusive: Supreme Court journalists and the bench are understood to have agreed a compromise after the spat over the notification of rules in late August that would have effectively excluded 80 per cent of current correspondents from the apex court.

Former Delhi High Court chief justice Dipak Misra and Kerala High Court chief justice Jasti Chelameswar have been sworn into the apex court today.

Bad news: in September 2011 the Supreme Court booked an apparent net deficit of more than 1,000 cases in its monthly pendency clearance efforts. If this rate were kept up, pending cases could double in less than five years.

Justice Markandey Katju, who retired from the Supreme Court just over two weeks ago, is set to become chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI).

Last Monday’s buzz was all about Justice Markandey Katju’s retirement, one of India’s most well-known and divisive apex court judges.

When an uncharacteristically subdued Katju rose from the Bench in the Chief’s Court for the last time on Monday, one half of the bar and the media sighed wistfully and the other half sighed with relief. One lot would miss the mayhem, humour, and quotability of the average Katju day in the Supreme Court. The other lot would be grateful for never having to go through the mayhem, humour, and quotability of the average Katju day in the Supreme Court.