Vacations on Vacations: Supreme Court's holidays list will make you jealous

How many vacation days do you enjoy as a working professional? Whatever the number may be, the Supreme Court's vacation list trumps everything. The SC whose verdicts have made many a citizen happy in 2018 is set to enjoy a vacation of 137 days in total this year, including Sundays, six days each of Holi, Dusshera and Diwali, a 49-day summer vacation and 14 days of year-end holidays. One out of 13 courts in SC sits during vacations to hear urgent cases.

This tradition of the courts being on vacation, sometimes for longer than usual, dates back to 1860 when they were set-up by the British and all of the Judges were British nationals. The judges were given vacation period keeping in mind their travelling time over long ships to and from their homes far west.

A petition has now been filed before the top court last year demanding that court vacations be cut short to reduce the pendency of cases since more than 3 crore cases are pending before courts currently. The petition suggests that the courts must be functional for at least six hours everyday, for 225 days a year. The reason for pendency of cases is the inadequate number of judges. India has only 13 judges per million people. Spreading out or minor reduction in holidays could help fasten all the pending cases.