In a move aimed at tackling the backlog of criminal appeals, the Gujarat High Court has announced that special benches will sit on working Saturdays from July to October to hear cases pending for over a decade, particularly where convicts have been imprisoned for more than 10 years.

To this end, both Division Benches and single-judge Benches will be constituted during this period to exclusively deal with such cases.

“The Criminal Appeals will be listed before the Special Benches on Saturdays, irrespective of whether the said matters are already fixed or adjourned to another date. This will be done by preponing or postponing the date assigned by the Hon'ble Courts/System-Generated next listing date,” the High Court stated.

The matters taken up on Saturdays will be marked as “Targeted Matters” and will be notified in a separate cause list published a day prior to each working Saturday.

However, the 100 oldest criminal appeals will be excluded from the Saturday listings, as they will continue to be heard under the “Wednesday Weekly List (WWL)” issued on July 2, 2025.

As part of this initiative, nine Division Benches and three single-judge Benches convened and heard cases on July 5, marking the beginning of this targeted effort.