Justice for the most vulnerable — delivered faster. The Union Cabinet has cleared a significant expansion of India's Fast Track Special Courts network, raising the count from 779 to 850 courts handling rape and POCSO cases, and extending the scheme through 2031 — a move Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, calling swift justice for women and children the 'topmost priority' of the Modi government.

A ₹3,788 crore commitment to dedicated justice

The revised scheme carries a total outlay of ₹3,788 crore, of which the Centre will bear ₹2,353 crore — roughly 62 per cent — with the remaining share to be contributed by states. The Cabinet decision extends the scheme's operational horizon to 2031, giving states a seven-year runway to consolidate the courts, fill vacancies, and clear accumulated backlogs.

The additional 71 courts — taking the network from 779 to 850 — are specifically targeted at rape cases under the Indian Penal Code and offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. POCSO mandates time-bound trials but backlogs in ordinary sessions courts have historically undermined that intent, making dedicated fast-track forums critical.

From Nirbhaya Fund to a standing architecture

The roots of this network trace to 2019, when the Union Cabinet approved a scheme for 1,023 Fast Track Special Courts, seeded partly through the Nirbhaya Fund created in the wake of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case. That original approval was itself part of a decade-long legislative and institutional response to the crisis in sexual-offence case disposal that began gathering momentum after 2013.

Successive cabinets have recalibrated the scheme — adjusting court counts and extending timelines — as absorption capacity varied across states. The pattern reflects a broader federal challenge: centralised funding and policy design meeting uneven state-level infrastructure, judicial vacancies, and prosecutorial capacity.

Four lakh cases disposed — and a backlog that remains

The claim that these courts have cleared over 4 lakh cases to date is the government's headline proof-point for the scheme's effectiveness. For context, India registers hundreds of thousands of POCSO and rape cases annually, and overall pendency in trial courts runs into millions of matters. Fast-track forums cannot solve every dimension of that challenge, but their concentrated docket — limited to sexual offence cases — allows judges and prosecutors to build subject-matter expertise and move cases at a pace general sessions courts rarely match.

The Ministry of Law and Justice tracks annual disposal data, and the operationalisation of the 71 new courts — when they are notified, staffed, and functional — will be the real test of Wednesday's announcement. States that have historically lagged in operationalising sanctioned courts will be the ones to watch.

India has built the architecture. Whether every victim waiting in that queue gets the swift justice the Cabinet promised now depends on what happens at the district court level, one hearing at a time.