New Delhi, Mar 29 (IT): Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi on Friday highlighted the fact that there were not enough judges in the Supreme Court for the number of pending cases and slammed the lawyers for mentioning matters.

CJI Gogoi said that they would not be hearing any mentioning of matters unless "it is a case of life and death".

"Sorry, we won't hear any mentioning matters," CJI Ranjan Gogoi said. "500 cases are listed. Where are the judges? And you keep on mentioning...," CJI Gogoi told lawyers.

Last year, Dipak Misra sounded the alarm on rising pendency at a time when the backlog touched 3.3 crore cases.

While 2.84 crore cases were pending in the subordinate courts, the backlog clogging the High Courts and Supreme Court (SC) was 43 lakh and 57,987 cases, respectively.

According to National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), the five states which accounted for the highest pendency were Uttar Pradesh (61.58 lakh), Maharashtra (33.22 lakh), West Bengal (17.59 lakh), Bihar (16.58 lakh) and Gujarat (16.45 lakh).

The matter is of high concern as large number of undertrials languish in jails across the country as they don't get bail and many even spend more than their sentence, had they been convicted.