Southern states dominate in justice delivery: India Justice Report

The second edition of India Justice Report ranked Maharashtra first in justice delivery to people among large and mid-size states with a population more than one crore for the second consecutive time. Tamil Nadu is ranked second followed by Telangana, Punjab and Kerala.

India Justice Report 2020 analysed the progress that states have achieved in capacity building and service delivery in four pillars of justice delivery; police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid.

In nearly 35 out of 36 states and union territories examined, undertrial inmates counted more than 50 per cent, and as of July 2020, one in four cases were pending in lower courts. Report for last year underlined that women occupy only 29 per cent of total judges in India and two-thirds of the country's prisoners are yet to be convicted. Additionally, only 1.5 crore people have received legal aid since 1995.

Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor, India Justice Report 2020, stressed, "The justice system has been neglected for too long. It entered the pandemic era with co-morbidities—underfunding, large vacancies, poor infrastructure and inadequately trained personnel at all levels. It must be designated as an essential service and be equipped as a first responder to provide the public with its services in every situation, especially emergencies and certainly in the on-going pandemic."

India Justice Report is an initiative for ranking Indian states based on delivery of justice to people, under Tata Trusts, in collaboration with Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS–Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives. The initiative was started in 2019.