LUCKNOW, July 25 -- The nature of litigation in the Allahabad high court is markedly different from that in district and subordinate courts in Uttar Pradesh with civil disputes accounting for a much larger share of the chunk and even outnumbering criminal cases at the Lucknow bench, according to the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) data. The combined pendency at the Allahabad high court and its Lucknow bench, as on July 23, stood at 12,28,799 cases. Of these, 6,28,954 were civil and 5,99,845 criminal cases, meaning civil matters constituted a slight majority of the overall backlog. This trend contrasts sharply with the state's subordinate courts, where criminal litigation overwhelmingly dominates. Of the 1.20 crore pending cases in lower courts, 1,00,03,264 (84.1%) are criminal, while only 18.91,221 (15.9%) are civil, highlighting the vastly different litigation profile at the trial court level. UP tops in pendency of cases in the lower courts in the country. The Allahabad HC also accounts for nearly 19% of the country's total high court pendency of 64,63,093 cases, making it the largest contributor to the national backlog. Nationally too, civil matters dominate high court pendency, with 45,02,597 civil cases against 19,60,496 criminal cases, though UP has a significantly higher proportion of criminal cases than the national average. The Allahabad HC has 9,97,887 pending cases, including 5,03,742 criminal and 4,94,145 civil matters. Criminal cases outnumber civil cases here but only marginally. The trend is, however, reversed at the Lucknow bench where 2,30,552 cases are pending, comprising 1,34,449 civil and 96,103 criminal matters. Civil litigation accounts for nearly 58% of the bench's total pendency, making it distinctly different from the Allahabad HC and the state's subordinate judiciary. According to Rakesh Pandey, president, Allahabad HC Bar Association, there may be several civil matters dominating the HC in contrast to lower courts where majority of disputes are criminal. "One important reason is that a lot of petty criminal cases originate in lower courts and end there only. Also, all big cases too do not travel to the HC. Not in more than 10-15% of cases of acquittals by district courts, the state files an appeal challenging the same in the HC," he said. Pandey said the Lucknow bench has the civil cases more than the criminal litigation because service matters reached there more. The age-profile of cases also differs between the Allahabad HC and its Lucknow bench. In the Allahabad high court, 83.5% pending matters are more than one year old and 39% have remained pending for over a decade. At the Lucknow bench, 76.67% of cases are older than one year, while 34% have crossed the 10-year mark. By comparison, in the state's subordinate courts, 74.13% of cases are over a year old, but only 18% are more than 10 years old, indicating that the high court carries a much heavier burden of long-pending disputes. The disposal figures for the current year show that fresh filings continued to outpace disposal, leading to a further rise in pendency. Across both the benches, 1,80,979 fresh cases were instituted during the less than seven months of the current year, while only 1,70, 522 cases were disposed of, resulting in a net addition of 10,457 cases to the pending bloc. At the Allahabad HC, 1,25,938 new cases were filed, including 53,389 civil and 72,549 criminal matters. During the same period, 1,20,697 cases were disposed of, comprising 53,426 civil and 67,271 criminal cases. While civil disposals marginally exceeded fresh filings, criminal filings continued to outstrip disposal. The Lucknow bench received 55,041 fresh disputes, including 26, 400 civil and 28,641 criminal matters, against 49,825 disposals, comprising 25,395 civil and 24,430 criminal cases. Here too, institutions exceeded disposals in both civil and criminal categories. The institution of new cases outpaces disposals of old cases in lower courts as well. Principal secretary (law) Udai Pratap Singh, however, does not see anything wrong with a high rate of institution of cases. "Efforts can be made to make disposal faster but institution of a large number of new cases per se is not bad because institution of cases only shows people's faith in the system," he said. While the Allahabad HC handles more than four-fifth of the high courts' workload owing to its jurisdiction over 63 districts, it has managed to keep pace with fresh filings better than the Lucknow bench. The Lucknow bench, despite serving only 12 districts, recorded almost the same net addition to the pendency during the current year, even as its chunk of cases remains distinctly more civil litigation-oriented than that of the principal seat....