India Justice Report 2020

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In News: The second edition of the Indian Justice Report (IJR) was recently launched.

About Indian Justice Report

• The Tata Trusts’ mission is to improve the quality of life, and an effectively functioning justice system is critical to this, not simply at an individual level, but for the economic and social development of the country as a whole.
• In a unique initiative, the India Justice Report ranks individual Indian states in relation to their capacity to deliver access to justice. 
• The Tata Trusts brought together a group of sectoral experts — Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, Tata Institute of Social Sciences – Prayas and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy — to develop a report that would measure the structural capacity of state-based instrumentalities of the justice system against their own declared mandates with a view to pinpointing areas that lend themselves to immediate solutions. 
• The first ever ranking was published in November 2019.
• The ranking is based on quantitative measurements of budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload, diversity across police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid in 18 large and medium sized states with a population of over 1 crore and 7 small states. Data for 7 Union Territories (UTs) and 4 other unranked states is also provided.

Highlights India Justice Report 2020

• The report highlights stark conclusions when aggregated for an all-India picture.
• Women comprise only 29 percent of judges in India.
• Two-thirds of the country’s prisoners are yet to be convicted.
• In the last 25 years, since 1995, only 1.5 crore people have received legal aid, though 80 per cent of the country’s population is entitled to.
• The report ranks Maharashtra once again at the top of the 18 large- and mid-sized states (with a population of over one crore each), followed by Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Punjab and Kerala.
• The list of seven small states (population of less than one crore each) was topped by Tripura, followed by Sikkim and Goa.

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