With over 3.5 crore cases pending in courts, can India ever solve its legal logjam? Delays in contract enforcements and dispute resolution have become one of the key roadblocks hurting the ease of doing business in the country.

This is evident from the fact that India continues to lag on the ‘enforcing contracts’ metric and climbed only one rank -- from 164 to 163 -- in the 2018 Ease of Doing Business Index. But the Economic Survey 2018-19 believes there is cure at hand to resolve the country’s legal woes.

The Survey said that by appointing judges up to the sanctioned capacity, increasing the number of working days, establishing a separate Indian Courts and Tribunal Services cadre to look into the administrative aspects of the legal system and deploying technology, the country will be able to have a more efficient judicial system.

According to its estimates, the country needs to appoint 2,279 additional judges in district and subordinate courts, 93 in High Courts and one additional judge in the Supreme Court to achieve the 100 per cent ‘case clearance rate’. “This is already within the sanctioned strength and only needs filling vacancies,”’ the Survey said.

However, the Survey remarked that though increasing the number of working days may help boost productivity of the Supreme Court and some High Courts, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the subordinate courts. The district and subordinate courts account for 87.54 per cent of the pending cases.

“Given the potential economic and social multipliers of a well-functioning legal system, this may well be the best investment India can make,” the Survey added.