India Justice Report 2019

Mains Paper 2 : Executive & Judiciary |

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level : India Justice Report 2019

Mains level : State of Judicial functioning in India

India Justice Report

It was commissioned by Tata Trusts.
It is prepared by groups like Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, Tata Institute of Social Sciences – Prayas and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
It looks into the ‘four pillars’ – of Judiciary, Legal Aid, Police and Prisons, analysing the budgets, human resources, personnel workload, diversity, infrastructure and trends against the government’s declared standards and benchmarks.

Policing

The study took several factors to assess the police system in the states, ranging from modernisation, inducing women, diversity, budgeting, human resource planning and infrastructure.
On this front, the best score was achieved by Tamil Nadu – 6.49. UP received a score of 2.98, whereas Bihar got 3.77.
UP fared poor in terms of budgeting, spending on police per person, vacancies and diversity.

Prisons

This parameter was assessed on various factors ranging from overcrowding, inclusion of women staff, adequate human resources, budgeting, infrastructure, etc. Jharkhand fared the worst with a score of 3.46.
It was followed by Uttarakhand (3.72), Punjab (4.35), Andhra Pradesh (4.35) and UP (4.42). Surprisingly, Bihar stood at number six with a score of 5.61. The best in this regard was Kerala with a score of 7.18.

Judiciary

This parameter was assessed on availability of judges, clearance of cases, spending on judiciary, etc.
Bihar, with a score of 2.41, fared the worst in this regard. It was followed by UP (3.7), Karnataka (3.76), Uttarakhand (4.17) and Jharkhand (4.3).
Tamil Nadu again featured on the top in terms of judiciary with a score of 6.99. It was followed by Punjab (6.57), Haryana (6.23) and Maharashtra (5.96).
On an average, Bihar saw a bleak growth in expenditure on judiciary in comparison to total spending.
From 2011 to 2016, the state expenditure rose by 17.8 per cent; however, expenditure on judiciary rose by only 8 per cent.

Legal aid

The report also highlighted the importance of legal aid.
It said that almost 80 per cent of India’s 1.25-billion population is eligible for free legal aid, but only 15 million people have availed it since 1995.

States performance

Maharashtra has topped the list of states in delivering justice to people followed by Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana.
Law and order has always been a major concern in the two big states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
A deeper look at the statistics reveals that in almost every aspect, UP and Bihar exchanged the last and second last position.

Subscribe