The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) is a real-time online dashboard of pending and disposed cases across Indian courts, maintained as part of the eCourts project. The NJDG aggregates data from over 26,000 district and taluka courts plus participating High Courts, and presents statistical summaries by court, by state, by case type, by age, and by other filters.
**What it shows.** The NJDG is primarily a statistical aggregator, not a case-lookup tool: — Total pending cases (nationally and per court). — Breakdown by case type (civil / criminal / writ / etc.). — Age profile (cases pending less than 1 year, 1-5 years, 5-10 years, above 10 years). — Disposals per month and averages. — Institution vs disposal rates.
**What it is not.** The NJDG does not let you look up a specific case by CNR or party name — for that, use eCourts Services (services.ecourts.gov.in) or the relevant HC's case-status portal. Confusingly, the two systems share infrastructure but serve different purposes: NJDG for aggregate research, eCourts Services for individual case lookup.
**Research uses.** The NJDG is valuable for: — Policy research on judicial workload and disposal patterns. — Identifying courts with unusual pendency or case-age distributions. — Benchmarking a matter's progress against averages for that court and case type. — Drafting arguments that invoke aggregate pendency data (e.g. in delay / speedy-trial arguments).
Reporting rigour varies by court. Some courts' data is reliably up-to-date; others lag by weeks in reporting disposals.