About the data

Sources

Hearing records. The Supreme Court publishes a cause list (पेसी सूची) every working day, showing the cases each bench is to hear, and records what happened to each case. Jawafdehi Initiative collects these published records in a database. The figures cover hearings from 1 August 2016 (2073-04-17 BS) to 30 October 2026 (2083-07-13 BS): 138,807 cases in all.
Judgment texts. The Supreme Court publishes the full text of its judgments on its website. These texts are used to identify the justice who wrote each judgment.
Biographies and photographs. The Supreme Court's website: its list of justices, the curricula vitae it publishes for four justices, and its Annual Report 2081/82 (Annex 97), which gives each justice's date of appointment and date of entry into the judicial service. Names are written as on the court's list. Where the court does not publish a fact, such as a date of birth, the page says so; no detail is taken from any other source. Dates of mandatory retirement are calculated from the published date of birth: a justice leaves office on reaching 65 years of age (Constitution of Nepal, Article 131), and the term of office of the Chief Justice is six years (Article 129(4)).

What the figures mean

Bench (इजलास): The justices who hear a case together, usually two, sometimes three or five. Each figure for a justice counts the work of every bench on which the justice sat. Benches are assigned by the court, so the kinds of cases before each justice differ.
Cases listed: Cases that appeared at least once on the cause list of a bench including the justice. A case is counted once, however many times it was listed.
Cases decided: Cases that a bench including the justice decided by a judgment (फैसला) or final order (अन्तिम आदेश). Each case is counted once.
Cases decided per year: Cases decided divided by the length of service from the date of appointment to 30 October 2026 (2083-07-13 BS).
Time to decision: The number of days from a case's registration at the Supreme Court to its judgment or final order.
Median: The middle value: half of the cases took less time, and half took more. It is less affected than an average by a few very old cases.
Middle half of cases: The range of time taken by the middle half of the cases decided, leaving out the quarter decided fastest and the quarter decided most slowly.
All benches, same period: The same measure for every case the whole court decided between the justice's appointment and 30 October 2026 (2083-07-13 BS). It is given for context, not as a target.
Judgments written: Judgments in which the published text names this justice as the writing justice. The writing justice is named in about half of all published texts, and in more than four in five of those from 2080/81 onwards.
Fiscal year: The Nepali fiscal year runs from Shrawan to Asar, that is from mid-July to mid-July. 2081/82 is the year from July 2024 to July 2025. Dates are given in both the Gregorian calendar (AD) and Bikram Sambat (BS).

Analytics: definitions

Each justice's page has an Analytics section with the same cards, worked out the same way, for every justice. Each figure is shown beside the figure for all benches over the same period, and on a strip of circles showing where the sitting justices fall, each compared with all benches over his or her own period. The strip shows no names and no ranks. None of the figures is a judgement of a justice's work.

Listing: One case on one bench's cause list on one day. A case listed ten times counts as ten listings.
Result of a listing: What the court recorded for the listing: decided (फैसला or अन्तिम आदेश), interim order (आदेश), adjourned (स्थगित), not reached (हेर्न नभ्याइने, the bench did not get to the case that day), cannot hear (हेर्न नमिल्ने), or bench did not sit. Listings with no result recorded are left out of the shares, and their share is given beside them.
Cannot hear (हेर्न नमिल्ने): The bench recorded that it cannot hear the case, and the case goes to another bench. This is the proper course when a justice has a conflict of interest. The court records no reason for any such entry, and the entry belongs to the bench, not to one justice. The page also compares two-justice benches with this justice against the same colleagues sitting without this justice; that comparison holds the colleagues fixed, not the cases. A chart shows the same share for each fiscal year, beside all benches, on the same scale on every page; a year with fewer than 300 listings with a result before the justice's benches has no point.
Adjourned (स्थगित): The case was put off to another day. The court records who asked: most often a party's lawyer.
Sitting: One bench on one day. The records sometimes write the names of the same bench in two ways (for example with or without a final comma); the same justices on the same day are counted as one sitting.
Appeals, writ petitions and leave: Outcomes are taken from the decision type the court recorded with each final decision, each case counted once. Appeals: upheld (सदर), partly reversed (केही उल्टी), reversed (उल्टी), or sent back to a lower court. Writ petitions: granted (जारी) or dismissed. Leave to appeal or review: granted (अनुमति हुने) or refused. A share is shown only where a justice's benches decided at least 100 such cases; below that the page says so.
Corruption cases: Cases of the kinds the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority prosecutes (corruption, bribery, illicit enrichment, false certificates, misappropriation of public property), identified by the registered case type. The median time to decision is shown where a justice's benches decided at least 50. Outcomes are not shown, because the records rarely say who appealed.
All benches, same period: For listings: every listing that names at least one justice, from the justice's appointment to 30 October 2026 (2083-07-13 BS). For decisions: every final decision of the court over the same period.

What the figures cannot show

The work of one justice alone. Benches decide jointly. The figures do not show how any justice voted or what any justice contributed to a decision.
The difficulty of cases. Some cases are complex or involve many parties; some arrive after many years in the lower courts. Time to decision reflects these differences as much as the pace of any bench.
Whether a decision was right. The figures count decisions and measure time. They say nothing about the merits of any case. An appeal upheld is not better or worse than an appeal reversed.
Why a bench could not hear a case. The court does not record the reason for any “cannot hear” entry, or which justice it concerned.
Complete records. For each justice, between 10% and 25% of hearings have no outcome recorded. Some hearings carry no names of justices, most often in 2077/78 and 2083/84. The records for 2082/83 contain 35% fewer hearings than those for 2081/82. Figures may change as the records are completed.

How the figures are produced

Every figure on this site is calculated by computer programs directly from the court records described above, and the same calculations are run for every justice. A full re-run of these programs on 2 November 2026 (2083-07-16 BS) reproduced every figure. The programs and the data are kept by Jawafdehi Initiative. The site publishes totals only: it contains no information about the parties, lawyers or details of any individual case.

Download the figures

Contact and corrections

The Supreme Court, any justice, and any reader who finds an error are invited to contact Jawafdehi Initiative. Corrections will be made promptly.

WhatsApp: +977 976-8630501 Email: inquiry@jawafdehi.org

Jawafdehi Initiative (जवाफदेही इनिशिएटिभ)