One of the reasons for many legislations to be ineffective is lack of swift & timely disposal of cases. The NDPS act is no exception. Five-year data from 2014 to 2018 indicates that more than 83% of the NDPS cases were pending in courts. The actual number of pending cases has only been increasing year after year. In an earlier story, we analysed the trends of police disposal of cases under the NDPS Act. We have noticed that, over the five-year period i.e. 2014-18, the proportion of cases charge-sheeted by the police and moved to the courts has increased. This has effectively reduced the share of these cases that are pending investigation at the police end. While the increased disposal at the police end is appreciable, the overall situation can only be ascertained by looking at the trend of disposal of these cases in the courts. In this story, we take a look at the court disposal of the cases booked under the NDPS Act. The information available in the annual Crime in India reports published by the NCRB ( National Crime Records Bureau) is considered even for this analysis. More than 83% of the NDPS cases with the courts are pending trial At the beginning of 2014, a total of 1.18 lakh cases booked under the NDPS Act, were pending for trial in the courts. By the end of the year, the number of such cases increased to around 1.3 lakh i.e. 83.1% of the total cases that were up for trial in the courts for the year. During the same year, the number of new cases which came up for trial was around 39 thousand. In the ensuing years, the number of new cases up for trial increased continuously. In 2015, there has been a significant jump with 50.8 thousand new cases. In the next three-year period i.e. 2016-18, the number of new cases that came up for trial in the courts was 50.3 thousand, 56.4 thousand and 60.1 thousand respectively. Although the trial was complete in only around 26.6 thousand cases in 2014, this number increased significantly in the next two years with trials completing in 35.2 thousand and 37.1 thousand cases respectively. It ought to be noted that, the number of cases (around 1.5 thousand) which were disposed of without trial in 2016 was comparatively higher than the previous and subsequent years. In 2017, the number of cases disposed of was 34.1 thousand & in 2018, the number went up to 38.5 thousand. Apart from cases that were disposed of without trial, the cases disposed of include cases where the accused were ‘Discharged/Acquitted’ and those where the accused were ‘Convicted’. The number of convictions was around 19 thousand in 2014, which increased to 26.5 thousand in 2015. After a fall in the convictions in the next two years, it increased to 28.3 thousand in 2018. Meanwhile, the number of cases that were disposed of as ‘Discharged/Acquitted’ increased from 6.7 thousand in 2014 to 9.7 thousand in 2018. Since a higher number of cases were disposed of in 2015, the pendency rate came down from 83.1% to 80.6 %. This slightly increased to 81.3 % in 2016. By 2017, the proportion of pending cases increased to 83.7%, with only a slight fall in 2018 to 83.6%. The higher pendency in both 2017 & 2018, is a result of an increase in the number of new cases for trial and the lack of a proportionate increase in the disposal of cases. It has to be noted that the pendency rate of all the crimes covered under SLL laws was 82.6 % in 2018. Increase in the proportion of pending cases in Metro cities In 2016, the number of new cases under the NDPS Act in Metro cities, that came up for trial was around 17 thousand. As highlighted in earlier stories, NCRB’s CII report enlists 19 cities as metro cities. This number fell in the next two years when around 15.4 thousand and 15 thousand cases came up for trial in 2017 & 2018 respectively. Despite the fall in new cases for trial, the number of pending cases increased from 35.8 thousand in 2016 to 47.2 thousand in 2018. This increase in the number of pending cases can be attributed to two factors. The first one being a significant decrease in the number of cases that were disposed without trial. In 2016, around 1.4 thousand cases were disposed without trial (compounded). However, in the next two years, only 16 and 175 cases in the metro cities have been disposed without trial. The second factor is the decrease in the number of cases where the trial is complete. In 2016, the trial was complete in around 11.8 thousand cases, which fell to 8.5 thousand and 9.9 thousand in 2017 & 2018 respectively. This means that there is a significant drop in the total number of cases disposed of by the courts.