273 Courts Short: Why the Supreme Court Just Gave India Six Months to Fix Its Drug Trial Backlog

In In Re: Creation of Special Exclusive Courts (SMW(Crl) No. 1/2026), an order dated 7 September 2026, a bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V Mohana directed the Union and every state and union territory to set up the remaining exclusive courts for narcotics trials within six months, after finding that only 176 of the 449 required courts are currently functioning. Here is why that shortfall is not a paperwork problem, and what the Court has ordered to fix it.

The Person This Number Actually Represents

Somewhere in an overcrowded district jail right now, a person accused under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 is waiting. Not for a verdict. For a trial date.

Under Section 37 of the NDPS Act, bail in most narcotics cases is granted only if the court is satisfied there are reasonable grounds to believe the accused is not guilty and is unlikely to commit any offence while on bail, a standard so strict that undertrials routinely spend years in custody before their case is even heard on merits. Without a dedicated court to try the case, it sits in a queue behind everything else an ordinary sessions court is already handling.

That is the real cost of a missing courtroom. Not paperwork. Time, spent behind bars, before guilt or innocence has been decided.

Why Narcotics Cases Get Their Own Courts

Section 36 of the NDPS Act empowers the central and state governments to constitute exclusive Special Courts to try offences under the Act. The idea behind a dedicated court is straightforward: an ordinary criminal court juggles everything from cheque bounce complaints to murder trials, and narcotics cases, with their strict bail thresholds and the liberty of undertrials at stake, are meant to move faster than that queue allows. A special court exists only to try these cases, which is supposed to mean shorter delays between arrest, charge, trial, and verdict. When the special court itself does not exist, that entire purpose collapses back onto the general court system it was designed to bypass.

What the Supreme Court Found and Ordered

The Court has been monitoring the creation of special courts under statutes including the NDPS Act and the National Investigation Agency Act as a suo motu matter, meaning the Court took up the issue on its own motion rather than in response to a petition filed by a litigant. In this order, the bench recorded that the number of exclusive NDPS courts required nationally had been revised upward from 394 to 449, and that only 176 are currently operational, up from 113 previously. On the NIA side, exclusive courts have increased from 14 to 22, still short of what the caseload demands.

Calling the rise in narcotics offences an "alarming increase," the Court directed the Union and all states and union territories to establish the remaining NDPS courts preferably within six months, with infrastructure and judicial staff appointments to be expedited without delay. States identified as particularly behind, including Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, were given tighter deadlines of two to four weeks to show progress. The Court also capped the caseload for NIA courts at ten to fifteen cases each, so that consolidating cases into fewer courts does not simply recreate the same backlog in a different form.

What This Means for States

This is now a time-bound judicial direction, not a policy suggestion. States that fail to show progress within the shorter deadlines set for them can expect to be called back before the Court to explain the delay. Budgeting for judicial infrastructure and staff appointments for these courts is no longer discretionary timing, it is compliance with a Supreme Court order.

What This Means for Undertrials and Defence Lawyers

For anyone with a pending NDPS matter in a state without a functioning exclusive court, this order is worth raising directly. A trial delayed because the required special court simply does not exist strengthens an undertrial's argument under Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a speedy trial, and this order gives that argument a concrete, dated judicial finding to point to rather than a general complaint about court delays.

This blog is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance on NDPS Act matters, bail applications, or criminal trial delays, please contact our team.