Karnataka has the best administration in terms of formal justice sytem among the large and mid-sized states of the country, revealed the third edition of India Justice Report (IJR).
IJR has remained the only comprehensive quantitative index in the country, which used the government’s own statistics to rank the formal justice system of 18 large and mid-sized states with a population above 10 million and seven small-sized states with a population of up to 10 million.
The third edition of the report, which was launched on April 4, has been prepared by representatives from a number of civil society organisations, including the Centre for Social Justice, DAKSH, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, TISS-Prayas and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
As power IJR 2022, Karnataka topped the large and mid-sized states in formal justice system with an overall score of 6.38, followed by Tamil Nadu and Telangana, both scoring 6.11, respectively.
The state, which had ranked 6th in 2019 and 14th in 2020, jumped up 13 spots to reach the top in 2022. As per the report, the state reduced High Court judge vacancies from 50 to 21 per cent, while increasing the number of women judges in subordinate courts and improving per capita spend.
Persisting judge vacancies at both the High Court and district court level, coupled with a court hall shortage, led Rajasthan to slip to from 10th rank in IJR 2 to 15th in IJR 3.
The High Court staff vacancies also led Punjab to fall from fourth to 12th rank.
In the small states category, Meghalaya improved its per capita spend, filled up judge vacancies and increased the number of women in district courts, leading to its rise from seventh to fourth position with an overall score of 3.97.
Both Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh also showed improvement. While Sikkim moved from second to the top slot with a score of 5.01, Arunachal Pradesh moved from fifth position to second rank with an overall score of 4.28.
However, Himachal Pradesh slid down to sixth place from fourth due to increased judge and staff vacancies in the High Court, along with decreased clearance rates and shortage of court halls. Goa showed a similar declining trend, slipping from third to the last place among the small states.
Madhya Pradesh rose from 16th to 8th position and Andhra Pradesh from 12th to 5th.
Maharashtra moved down from top position in both IJR 2019 and IJR 2020 to 11th in IJR 2022.
Uttar Pradesh continued at the bottom of the table for the third time in a row, scoring 3.78.
As per the report, small yet consistent
improvements could lead to quite dramatic rises.
Improvements in one indicator, such as filling a vacancy or building more diversity into a system, would have a positive ripple effect on other indicators and cumulatively affect
overall rankings, it noted.
It said Gujarat’s rise in the prison
pillar was attributable to its efforts to reduce vacancies and improve caste and gender diversity. This had the knock on effect of reducing workloads and increased utilisation of allocated budgets, all of which contributed to the state’s rise in rank, noted the IJR 2022.
However, the downward shifts were not necessarily attributable to in-state deterioration, but could also result due to improved performance of other states.
It further said that retaining a positive rank sometimes has to do not only with a state’s own improvements but also on the slow pace of capacity
improvement in other states.
Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, scores across the board improved. Maharashtra, the best scoring state in IJR 2020, came in with a score of 5.77 while Karnataka, top of the table in IJR 2022, has scored 6.38. Even the worst scorers showed improvements, going from 3.15 to 3.78.
The IJR 2022 observed that decades of continuing disrepair had intensified the justice delivery system’s incapability to deliver timely justice, with the heaviest toll falling on the justice user.
The report has been a collaborative effort undertaken in partnership with DAKSH, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Common Cause, Centre for Social Justice, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and TISS-Prayas.
First published in 2019, the third edition of the IJR has added an assessment of the capacity of State Human Rights Commissions.
It continued to track improvements and persisting deficits in each state’s structural and financial capacity to deliver justice based on quantitative measurements of budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload, and diversity across police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid for all 36 states and UTs.
It is considered as first-of-its-kind national periodic reporting that ranked the capacity of states to deliver justice.
Through the filters of human resources, infrastructure, budgets, workload and diversity, the report assessed the capacity of four core pillars of the justice system to deliver to mandate: police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid.
By comparing data over a five-year period, the IJR assessed efforts made by the governments year on year to improve the administration of justice. This ‘trend’ analysis has helped discern each state’s intention to improve the delivery of justice and match it with the needs on the ground.
By bringing previously siloed data all in one place, the IJR has been able to provide policy makers with an easy but comprehensive tool.
On one hand, having the data all in one place provided a jumping off point on which to base holistic policy frameworks while on the other hand, the itemisation of the data into budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload and diversity helped to pinpoint low hanging fruit, which, if tackled early on, could set up a chain reaction reformative of the whole.
The findings of the report have a lot of importance for governments, civil society and the business community as well because it provided important stakeholders with objective data around which to fashion their own recommendations.
It further permitted participatory dialogues between governments and active citizens of disparate ideologies to be underpinned by objective facts rather than premised in opinion. This enhanced the chances for reforms through consensus building.
According to rights and social justice activist Maja Daruwala, who is also the Editor and Convenor of IJR 2022, the report was based on publicly available data of different government entities and the judiciary. All efforts were made to verify that the information presented herein was correct to the best of her knowledge, noted Daruwala.
Any part of this report, including design, may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo copy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, she added.
The report noted that every state had statutorily mandated quotas for SC, ST and OBC. In the police category, only Karnataka has been able to fulfil these reservations.
It said not a single State or Union Territory met their own reserved quotas for women in police.
The total number of pending cases across all 25 State Human Rights Commissions in March, 2021 stood at 33,312. There were 44 percent national average vacancy across 25 SHRCs, it added.
The report noted that only Arunachal Pradesh reported having CCTV cameras in all 14 spots in all its 24 police stations, as directed by the Supreme Court.
It said only eight States and UTs, including Andaman & Nicobar Islands,
Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Ladakh, Tripura, Karnataka, Delhi and Goa had night vision-equipped CCTVs.
Regarding the rural-urban divide, the report said in 19 states/UTs, urban police stations served greater population than their rural counterparts. Kerala’s urban police stations served 10 times the population of a rural one and Gujarat’s four times.
Total 24 states/UTs provided education to less that five percent inmates during 2021, where the share of undertrials was more than 60 percent.
It said the number of legal services clinics dropped to 4,742 in 2022 from 14,159 in 2020. During 2021-22, National Lok Adalats settled cases involving amount of Rs 7,322 crore.
No court worked with a full complement of judges except the High Court of Sikkim and the district
courts in Chandigarh, noted the report.
Among the 18 large and mid-sized states, only Kerala could achieve case clearance rates of 100 per cent and more at both High Court and subordinate court levels.
At the district court level, no state/UT could fully meet all its Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes quotas.
Regarding the four pillars of justice- Police, Prisons, Judiciary and Legal aid, the report noted that Tamil Nadu remained no 1 in Judiciary in all three IJRs.
Telangana topped this year in Police department, jumping from 11th rank in IJR 2019 and 10th position in 2020.
Tamil Nadu reached the number 1 rank in Prisons, jumping from 10th rank in IJR 2019 and sixth in IJR 2020.
Jharkhand excelled in Legal Aid, reaching the top position from 14th in IJR 2019 and fourth In 2020.
Both caste and gender hit up against the glass ceiling. There were 35 per cent women in subordinate courts while just 13 per cent in high courts.
Similarly, the share of women in police at the officer level was eight per cent
as opposed to 12 per cent at the constabulary level.
The share of SC, ST and OBC police at the officer level was 15 per cent, 10 per cent and 27 per cent respectively, much lower than 16
per cent, 12 per cent and 32 per cent within the
constabulary.
During the pandemic, the challenge before the justice delivery system was to find ways of working through an unprecedented situation and evolve innovative responses even as every
sub-system was under tremendous strain. Post-pandemic, this challenge has continued in exacerbated form.