To reduce the number of cases pending before it, the Supreme Court has approved setting up of single judge benches to hear cases concerning bail and transfer. This will be the first time that the SC will constitute single judge benches.

It may be mentioned here that the apex court had benches with two or more number of judges to hear various cases. Earlier, only during vacations, a single judge bench used to hear cases pertaining to issues of transfer of criminal cases or civil suits from one court to another.

"In India, we have a little over one thousand 50-year- old cases and above two lakh 25-year old cases," Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had said in Guwahati recently.