Over three million cases were pending in various high courts in the country as on June 30, 2004, Minister of State for Law and Justice K Venkatapathy informed the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

In a written reply, he said there is no proposal to set up a committee to look into the matter and suggest ways and means to ensure speedy disposal of the 3,241,275 cases in arrears.

On Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's suggestion that the judiciary could cut down vacations to clear pending cases, the minister said no resolution in this regard was adopted at the chief justices and chief ministers' conference held recently.

• Cut down on vacations: PM to judiciary

However, various resolutions, including those envisaging exercises on caseload management and court and resource management by working out a judge-case ratio instead of the judge-population ratio, were adopted to reduce/eliminate the backlog of cases.