India Justice Report (IJR) 2022

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In news–The third edition of India Justice Report (IJR) has been released recently.

About India Justice Report-

The India Justice Report (IJR) was initiated by Tata Trusts in 2019.
The foundation’s partners include the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS-Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives, IJR’s data partner.
It compiles and categorises data of states and UTs, based on “four pillars” of justice delivery—the police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid.
Each pillar is analysed through the prism of budgets, human resources, workload, diversity, infrastructure, and trends (intention to improve over a five-year period), against the state’s own declared standards and benchmark.
It separately assesses the capacity of the 25 State Human Rights Commissions as well.

Key findings-

The IJR 2022, like the previous two, has tracked the performance of States in capacitating their Justice delivery structures to effectively deliver mandated services.
Although states have increased budget allocation for legal aid, legal aid clinics reduced by 44 per cent between 2019 to 2021, the India Justice Report (IJR) 2022 stated, while adding that all states and Union Territories contributed more than 60 per cent to their legal aid budgets.
The the report mentions that India’s justice system as a whole remains plagued by low budgets. This could be due to the fact that except for two union territories, Delhi and Chandigarh, no state spends more than 1 per cent of its total annual expenditure on the judiciary.
The report further reasons that most states have not fully utilised the funds given to them by the Centre and their own increase in spending on the police, prisons, and judiciary has not kept pace with the overall increase in state expenditure.
Despite this, the national per capita spending on police significantly increased from Rs 912 in 2017-18 to Rs 1151 in 2020-21.
Concerning budgets, the report states the national per capita spend on legal aid, including the expenditure of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) and the state/UT governments themselves, is a “meagre Rs 4.57 per annum”.
The report flags the issue of “vacancy” in areas like the police, prison staff, judiciary, and legal aid.
When it comes to the judiciary, it highlights that India has about 20,076 judges for a population of 1.4 billion, indicating a vacancy of 22 per cent among the sanctioned posts.
Among high courts, there is a 30 per cent vacancy of judges, it says, adding that only 13% of High Court judges and 35% of Subordinate Court judges are women.
On the aspect of workload in the judiciary, the report said that in 28 states, one in every four high court cases is pending for more than five years.
Further, the report states that as of December 2022, India had only 19 judges per one million people (when calculated against the sanctioned strength), which falls behind the Law Commission’s 1987 target of reaching 50 judges per million population in a decade.
The report also brings to the forefront the current backlog of 4.8 crore cases in the judiciary.
On the subject of prisons, the report said that prisons are over-occupied at over 130%, with more than two-thirds or 77.1% of the prisoners still awaiting the completion of investigation or trial.
Moreover, around 25% of the police stations in India do not have a single CCTV.
It also said that the representation of women in prison staff is 13%. Despite this, the share of jails with video conferencing increased to 84% as opposed to the previous 60% in 2020.
When it comes to the “police”, the report flags the issue of inadequate women representation in the police, which currently stands at 11.75%, despite their numbers doubling in the last decade.
Moreover, about 29% of the officer positions are vacant%. The police-to-population ratio is 152.8 per lakh, whereas the international standard is 222, the report also mentions.
On the subject of diversity, the IJR states that Karnataka remains the only state to consistently meet its quota for SC, ST and OBC positions, both among Police officers and the constabulary, whereas in the judiciary, at the Subordinate/District Court level, no state met all the three quotas.
Only Gujarat and Chhattisgarh met their respective SC quotas. Arunachal Pradesh, Telangana, and Uttarakhand met their respective ST quotas.
Kerala, Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana met OBC quotas.

State’s rankings-

In IJR 2022 the State of Karnataka has achieved the top rank among the 18 large and mid-sized States with populations over one crore, as per the justice delivery namely Police, Judiciary, Prisons, and Legal Aid.
The State of Tamil Nadu has ranked in second position and Telangana in Third. The State of Uttar Pradesh is at rank 18 which is the lowest.
The State of Gujarat has got the fourth position and Andhra Pradesh is at slot five.
The list of Seven Small States with a population less than one crore each, was topped by Sikkim which was ranked second in 2020.
Sikkim has been followed by Arunachal Pradesh which was at rank 5 in 2020 [2020 and Tripura is at rank three].
Tripura was at the rank one in 2020. In this list, the State of Goa is at rank Seven which is the lowest.