India’s justice system is a topic of perennial interest and concern, given its critical role in maintaining law and order and upholding citizens’ rights. A recent significant development has been the release of the India Justice Report (2020) prepared by Tata Trusts in alliance with the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, DAKSH, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. This report reveals insights into numerous aspects of the country’s justice delivery system, examining the capacity of different states to ensure justice.
Overview of the India Justice Report 2020
The India Justice Report delves deep into an array of factors that affect the justice delivery system across various Indian states. The report scrutinizes issues like expenditure, vacancies, representation of women, human resources, infrastructure, workload, and diversity across 18 large- and medium-sized states, each having a population of over 1 crore, along with seven smaller states.
Rankings Across Various States
The report assigns an overall ranking to each state based on its performance across four pillars: Judiciary, Police, Prisons, and Legal Aid. Maharashtra topped the list for the second time consecutively, with Tamil Nadu and Telangana following in the ranks. Conversely, Uttar Pradesh fell last on the list. Amongst smaller states, Goa emerged as the highest-ranked, with Arunachal Pradesh occupying the bottom position.
Women’s Representation in the Police Force and Judiciary
Analysis of female representation in the police force placed Bihar at the top, with women making up 25.3% of its police force. No other state had over 20% representation of women in their respective police forces. When it came to the officer category, the share of women was significantly lower at just 6.1%. Tamil Nadu led the pack with the highest percentage of women police officers at 24.8%, followed by Mizoram at 20.1%.
When it comes to women in the judiciary, only 29% of judges in High Courts all over the country were found to be women. Only Sikkim had over 20% women judges. Worryingly, four states namely, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Tripura and Meghalaya had no women judges in their high courts.
State of Social Justice
The report highlighted that Karnataka was the only state that fulfilled its quotas for SC, ST, and OBC in both officer cadre and constabulary, with Chhattisgarh being the only other state meeting the diversity requirements for constabulary.
Issues Related to Financing and Undertrials
Despite being an essential service, legal aid has reached only 1.5 crore people in the last 25 years, with the Centre reportedly spending Rs. 1.05 per capita during 2019-20. The high proportion of undertrials is another concern as two-thirds of the total prisoners are undertrials waiting for a conviction.
Root Causes of Poor Justice Delivery
The report points towards several causative factors for inadequate justice delivery including lack of infrastructure, uneven human resource distribution, poor utilization of central funds and ineffective use of Lok Adalats to ease the burden on the judiciary.