India Justice Report 2019

• The India Justice Report 2019 was recently published.

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.

Highlights of the report

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.