Karnataka scores high on justice delivery but India falls short of recommended number of judges

The India Justice Report, which used a mixture of official statistics from the four pillars of justice delivery — police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid, was collaboratively researched and authored by the Centre for Social Justice and various organisations.

Bengaluru: India, with a population of 1.4 billion, has only 21,285 judges — roughly 15 judges for every million people, according to the 4th edition of the India Justice Report. This remains well below the 1987 Law Commission's recommended benchmark of 50 judges per million population.

The report, which was released on Tuesday, highlighted that vacancies in the judiciary, police and prison staff had led to high workloads. Even high courts had a 33% vacancy in judges and a 21% staffing gap at the district judiciary. This translated to a high workload, with a district judge handling an average workload of 2,200 cases.

The report, which used a mixture of official statistics from the four pillars of justice delivery — police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid, was collaboratively researched and authored by the Centre for Social Justice and various organisations.

There was a similar pattern of staffing gaps across the police force (28% at the officer-level and 21% at the constabulary-level) and prisons (28% vacancy among officers, 28% in cadre staff, 44% in correctional staff and 43% vacancy among medical officers). Also a matter of concern, the IJR report highlighted, was a 43% drop in paralegal volunteers at the community level.

While improvements were recorded in terms of the installation of CCTVs across police stations in the country, video conferencing and legal service clinics at jails, prisons remained overoccupied. The national average occupancy rate of prisons was more than 131%. At its current rate, India’s prison inmate population is projected to touch 6.8 lakh by 2030, while its prison capacity is likely to grow to 5.15 lakh.

“The fourth edition of the India Justice Report points out that improvements remain few and far between in the absence of adequate attention given to resources. Alas, the burden continues to remain on the individual seeking justice, and not the state to provide it,” says Justice Madan B Lokur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court.

Karnataka ranks first

Karnataka retained its top spot among 18 large and mid-sized states in overall justice delivery, and was followed by Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala.

Karnataka was the only state which fulfilled the SC, ST and OBC quotas at both the officer and constabulary level in the police force. Nevertheless, no state in the country met their own reserved quotas for women.