As India swelters through the unforgiving summer, an astonishing reality looms over millions of pending court cases: justice itself has gone on holiday as “judicial vacations” have started. While city streets heat up and government offices toil through humid days, the hallowed halls of India’s Supreme and High Courts stand largely empty. In a year, the Supreme Court officially operates only about 193 days a year, High Courts about 210, and trial courts roughly 245. These figures are vestiges of a different era, yet today they collide with a chronic and explosive case backlog.

Nearly 70,000 cases sit pending in the Supreme Court, about 59.16 lakh in High Courts and a staggering 4.14 crore in subordinate courts. In all, roughly 4.75 crore cases plague India’s justice system. And yet courts reflexively shut down for week-long holidays during Dussehra and Diwali, two weeks for Christmas and New Year, and a two-month summer vacation spanning late May to early July; traditional breaks handed down from colonial times. Isn’t this a cruel paradox: justice delayed by vacation.

From the litigant’s vantage, these breaks are not quaint respites but brutal interruptions of life-and-death disputes. The Supreme Court Observer notes that litigants often fear “cases will only be heard in the winter and summer vacations”. After years of waiting, they see judges packing bags rather than bench files. As former Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju bluntly remarked in Parliament, people feel that “the long vacation which the courts obtain is not very convenient for justice-seekers,” and it became his “duty to convey the message…of this House to the judiciary”.

BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi agreed, pointing out that “constitutional courts remain shut for around 47 days in the summer and around 20 days during winter,” even as every other public office keeps functioning. “I urge that vacations be vacated,” he said, demanding that judges follow standard leave rules like all other employees. In short, the impatience has reached the halls of power: Why should courts, above all, treat justice as seasonal?

The history of judicial vacation- A Colonial Relic in the 21st Century

The idea of synchronized court holidays is a historical throwback, not a contemporary necessity. During British rule, most Indian judges were expatriate British or Anglo-Indian officials with families back in Europe. It was common for them to journey by sea for weeks, spend summers in England, and return after long voyages.

Indian summers were considered torrid and inhospitable, so British judges instituted a three-month summer break to retreat to cooler climates. They also took Christmas off, as evidenced by early Federal Court schedules. In effect, long breaks were built around the colonial master’s comfort. Independence changed the rulers but not the regimen: the traditional vacation calendar continued, eventually adding Diwali holidays as new judges, mostly Hindus, took that time off.

In 2023, India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice unanimously declared this practice a “colonial legacy” ripe for overhaul. The committee, chaired by Union Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, explicitly said: “The vacations of Supreme Court and High Courts need to be relooked in a holistic way” because closing courts en masse causes “deep inconvenience to litigants”. It echoed a former Chief Justice of India’s suggestion that judges stagger their leave so courts “are constantly open” rather than all shutting down together.

These calls are far from isolated. The Law Commission’s 230th Report (2009) recommended chopping 10–15 vacation days off all court calendars, and the Malimath Committee on criminal justice (2000) urged a 21-day cut in vacations with courts open 206 days a year (versus the actual 193 today). Even judges themselves have occasionally grumbled. In 2014, Chief Justice R.M. Lodha, faced with a 2-crore case backlog, proposed keeping courts open year-round and having judges plan individual leave schedules. None of this has materialized. The arc of history has bent toward inertia of judicial vacation, not reform of justice.

It is telling that the origins of court holidays are so obscure. A Right to Information query revealed that neither the Supreme Court nor the Law Ministry had any record of when or why these vacations began. The CIC in 2016 noted with bemusement that even India’s administrators have no file trail explaining why courts spend weeks idle each year; yet they uphold the practice as tradition.

Such secrecy is itself suspect. In an age of transparency and accountability, the judiciary’s reasons for living like a private country club are hidden behind official silence. As RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal lamented, “Long-pending recommendation[s] of Law Commission for scrapping long court-vacations [have] been continuously ignored,” with no explanation of this privileged schedule. In sum, the vacation calendar is a self-preserving tradition where neither history nor practical need can justify its full extent.

Toll on Courts and Litigants: Backlogs and Adjournments

The human cost of these vacations is grimly quantifiable. Every day a court is on holiday, tens of thousands of cases go unheard. Litigants must endure extra months of suspense, sometimes for matters of immediate safety or livelihood. Data underline the crisis: as of May 2022, 4.75 crore cases were pending across the Supreme Court, High Courts, and all district courts, including over 70,000 at the apex and about 59 lakh in High Courts.

These numbers only mushroom. The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) in 2022 reported 4.14 crore cases awaiting trial in lower courts alone. Even after pandemic slowdowns, this backlog surged. In fact, by mid-2024, official figures indicated that India’s courts collectively sat on an astounding 4–5 crore cases.

While judges often have “vacation benches” of a few members to handle urgent business, this half-measure still leaves ordinary cases in limbo. And “urgent” is narrowly defined: typically writs for habeas corpus, or bail and interim reliefs. The vast majority of civil and criminal matters like property disputes, contract cases, family fights, criminal appeals are put on hold.

Lawyers report that routine hearings simply vanish from the calendar for weeks or months on end. One activist lawyer observed that outside a few ‘vacation courts’, parties suffer “a long process” of seeking permission just to get a hearing during recess. The sentiment is common: as one advocate told, the court does not consider many civil matters to be “urgent,” forcing petitioners to beg for special leave just to be heard while vacations continue.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the judiciary’s own statistics show that court holidays bite into human patience. The Supreme Court Observer reported that, in 2020, a full 94 days of the year were marked as holidays against 190 days of actual sittings. For those awaiting justice, those 94 days loom large: a fee to be paid for a ritzy colonial-era tradition. Consider this concrete example: in 2015, a critical writ challenging a constitutional amendment (the NJAC case) was partly argued during the summer recess. In 2017, a six-day hearing on triple-talaq also ran through vacation weeks. These rare exceptions underscore that some cases do press through, but they are the exception. Most ordinary disputes are idled by design.

The psychological impact on litigants is palpable. India Today noted that an “ordinary litigant” expects that the summer break means “further unavoidable delays in listing cases”. They watch the calendar flip by, understanding that no judge will glance at their file until normal sessions resume. The narrative is repeated case after case: hearings adjourned from May to July, from December to January, simply because “judicial vacation” was in effect. One cynic even quipped online that when courts on Facebook announce they are on a two-month vacation, “justice can wait” – a flippant sentence that belies a painful reality. Indeed, some commentators bluntly ask: should justice stop just because the calendar says “it’ time for judicial vacation”?

The backlog itself grows inexorably thanks to these breaks. Lawyers point out that the very work interrupted by vacations, researching, writing judgments, hearing cases, piles up each year. Any respite judges gain from vacation is often lost by months of catch-up afterward. One Mumbai advocate remarks acidly that “even if judges get a break, their workload will only increase post-break owing to pending cases piled up” through the vacation months. In other words, vacations create more urgency immediately afterward, as courts scramble to clear their desks. Yet the system treats this as normal: each year the pendency rises again, and the next vacation approaches with no end in sight.

Case Study: 6 Months for a Judgement

The human stories behind the statistics make the issue undeniable. Take the recent episode at the Bombay High Court involving Justice Madhav Jamdar. He sat in open court on December 19, 2024, delivering an 85-page judgment in a property dispute. The reasoning was pronounced in front of the lawyers; yet, to the litigants and lawyers alike, that judgment was effectively invisible for nearly half a year. It was not until May 30, 2025 that the judgment was officially uploaded to the High Court website.

When the delay came up, Justice Jamdar himself recorded the circumstances. In an extraordinary candid note, he explained that he regularly works “from early morning… till 2:00 AM” and even on weekends to address his backlog. He detailed staying in court until 11:30 PM almost every night, and then poring over case papers until the small hours at home. Even holidays seldom found him idle; he handles pending work in chambers on Saturdays, Sundays and scheduled holidays. If a judge must log 16-hour days to cope, one would expect lightning-fast disposals. Instead, the very judge who “runs the court” through late nights still took five-and-a-half months to release this written order.

This incident became a symbol of how the system tolerates such glacial speeds. Counsel who argued the case returned to Bombay to find that nothing had been published. They had to wait, their fate unresolved, not due to lack of judicial pronouncement, but due to administrative inertia during vacations. For their clients, another six months of limbo had been imposed. The image is stark: a judge warriering in chambers, yet justice encased in amber by systemic delay.

It is also telling that Justice Jamdar’s explanation blamed workload and long hours. Implicitly, this suggests every other judge is overtasked in a similar way. If every judge is working past midnight and still falling behind, the problem is not judge sloth but institutional overload. One can only imagine how ordinary trial judges, or those in understaffed courts, must cope. The Jamdar case resonated with lawyers nationwide: if even a High Court judge can’t finish a single judgment promptly, what hope for a common litigant’s case? In this way, the Jamdar episode is not anomalous but symptomatic – the human face of a broken calendar.

The Arrogance of the Closed Court

What makes the vacation system so infuriating is the air of entitlement and untouchability surrounding it. It is as if the judiciary, in its chambers of robed prestige, has decreed a sacred calendar beyond question. Criticisms of “judicial vacation” risk an aura of impropriety or even contempt. In practice, very few voices within the legal ecosystem publicly challenge it. Some at the Bar shyly whisper their discontent, but worry about retribution. One New Delhi advocate told that “no one speaks about this openly for fear of contempt of court”. Thus the conversation is taboo, couched in euphemism or official euphoras, leaving a common man to stew.

That silence reflects institutional arrogance. The judiciary defends its breaks in lofty terms, emphasizing the burden on judges and their need for “rejuvenation”. Yet notice the double standard: while lawyers and bureaucrats manage basic work-life balance within a fixed annual leave, judges claim a higher calling and extraordinary leave schedules. Even the argument that judges never take leave outside vacations doesn’t justify the scope of these breaks. If indeed judges are overburdened, the solution is more judges, better case management, or flexible rosters; not shutting courts for extended periods.

Indeed, analogous institutions never close shop for convenience. The idea of city courts, hospitals or police stations locking their doors for entire weeks or months strikes the public as absurd. Vijay Kelkar and Pradeep Mehta pointedly quipped that “imagine police stations or hospitals, which work round the clock, being closed for certain hours, let alone for months” – yet that is essentially what our courts do. It is a question of accountability: if a judge served as a public servant funded by public trust, then insisting on a private holiday schedule is deeply antithetical to that service ethos.

Public frustration is palpable. News outlets have captured the sentiment: editors note that the optics of “justices working fewer days than schoolchildren” fuel cynicism. Sushil Modi’s call to “vacate” judicial vacations had an unmistakable tone of provocation. Social media quips aside, the underlying complaint is raw: Indians see cases delayed, evidence growing cold, relationships collapsing, and feel let down by a system that declares “court is closed” when they need help.

There have been instances of litigants lobbying MPs and activists calling for reforms in appeals. Yet the system pushes back politely. Judges counter that they write judgments during break (as if that excuses shutting courts) and remind that many matters can’t wait. They also claim the Supreme Court has a comparably heavy docket to other top courts, or that SC disposal roughly matches intake; arguments of dubious comfort to a person stuck in a civil or criminal queue.

The public’s doubts become starker when judges are seen engaging in leisure while their case gathers cobwebs. Stories circulate: one celebratory child actor noted that even during a blitz of Khans and Bachchans enthralled by narratives of courts-in-action, the actual courthouses might as well have been on holiday during a heatwave. Activists have pointed out that the Supreme Court alone delivers over a thousand judgments a year (1,255 through December 2024) – a Herculean task for judges supposedly idle half the year. Even the CJI D.Y. Chandrachud acknowledged the “adjournment culture” and suggested cultivating professionalism to combat inertia. Yet at the first sign of public heat, the judiciary often blames external factors.

Chief Justice Gavai’s recent remarks illustrate this defensive posture. In May 2025 he snubbed pleas to list cases over vacation by chiding lawyers: “The first five judges are sitting through the vacation … yet we are blamed for the backlog. In reality, it is the lawyers who are unwilling to work during the vacations,” he said. It was a classic shifting of blame: judges claimed they would hold court, implying responsibility lay with petitioners who supposedly wouldn’t work the system. But the facts tell a different story.

The Supreme Court had only just renamed its recess weeks “Partial Working Days”, promising two to five benches a week (even roping in the top five judges) instead of the old two-bench tradition. And indeed those benches did sit, and judges did toil. Yet many urgent matters still got kicked into July or later. Even as the CJI proclaimed openness, the registry remained closed on weekends and holidays, and an ordinary party needing justice found no difference from previous summers.

Whether judges berate lawyers or cite court rules, the optics are unshakable. Onlookers see a closed calendar, with lawyers and litigants lined up at the gate. The vacation schedule is framed as sacrosanct, after all, “it’s on the calendar,” the refrain goes, as if tradition justifies delay. But consider this: if a hospital administrator announced six weeks off due to heritage reasons, or if Parliamenters found 40 legislative days a year to be “colonial leftovers,” public outcry would be immediate. Yet when judges do it, the conversation is muted. This double standard speaks of institutional privilege.

The cumulative effect of these revelations should stir unease. A civilized, modern democracy cannot function with a bureaucracy of justice taking nearly one-third of the year off while 5 crore lives hang in the balance. Reform recommendations abound. The Parliamentary panel suggested a rotation system: High Court judges would take turns off so that each court remains open year-round. The Malimath and Law Commission reports advised shaving vacations off by weeks. The Supreme Court’s own 2013 Rules trimmed summer from 10 to 7 weeks, and even converted some holidays to “optional” status. Yet these half-measures merely nibble at the edges of a bigger problem.

Digital technology offers a partial solution that courts have been slow to fully embrace. The pandemic proved Indian courts could function virtually: hearings by video, e-filing, remote judgement writing became common. If judges can adjudicate from home during a public health crisis, why can’t they do so during monsoon or harvest season? Many essential services and businesses operate continuously thanks to tech; the courts have lagged. Even without vacation benches, judges could be rostered to hear certain matters digitally so that justice flow need not wholly cease. A handful of progressive voices argue for just this; digital ‘courthouses’ that never fully shut down. Sadly, the prevailing mindset remains stuck on “calendar is king,” rather than “case is queen”.

Ultimately, the right to speedy justice is enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. Each time a court vacation rolls around, that right is implicitly curtailed.

Institutions that fight for citizens’ welfare cannot in good conscience demand a monopoly on grace while their own processes idle. Instead, the judiciary should signal humility and responsiveness. If judges truly need rest, they can take leave individually; no one argues a surgeon operates flat out 365 days a year. But the courthouse doors must never be locked to those in urgent need of relief.

With 5 crore unresolved cases, the stakes are nothing less than the credibility of India’s justice system. When citizens see “Court Closed” signs during a crisis of justice, trust is eroded. The era when the elite could treat summer as siesta time is over. The courts must shake off the cobwebs of colonial conventions and recalibrate their workweeks to modern expectations of efficiency and accountability. In 21st-century India, justice cannot stop for the summer.