Knowledge Nugget: Why is the India Justice Report 2025 important for UPSC?

Why in the news?

Last month, the fourth edition of the India Justice Report (IJR) 2025 was published, which tracks each state’s structural and financial capability to deliver justice. It was first published in 2019 with the support of Tata Trusts. The 2025 edition was undertaken in partnership with DAKSH, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Common Cause, Centre for Social Justice, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and TISS-Prayas

It uses the filters of human resources, infrastructure, budgets, workload, and diversity to assess the capacity of four core pillars of the justice system to deliver to mandates: police, prisons, judiciary, legal aid, and Human Rights Commissions.

Key Takeaways:

1. On policing, the report highlights continued concentration of police machinery in urban areas, and a decline in rural police stations between 2017 and 2023. The police-to-population ratio remains at 155 police personnel per 100,00 population – well below the sanctioned strength of 197. This often translates into longer investigations and compromises public safety. Just 81 police per lakh in Bihar exemplifies the situation.

2. On the judiciary, the report highlights a 20 per cent increase in pending cases, crossing the five-crore mark; shortages in court halls; vacancies in the high courts and district courts that stand at 33 per cent and 21 per cent respectively. There is an increase in the average workload in district courts – 2,200 cases per judge, while case clearance rate is at 94 per cent. This leads to a slower pace of justice and erodes public confidence in the justice system.

3. In prisons, overcrowding continues undeterred, with some running at over 400 per cent occupancy. The average overcrowding in prisons stands at 131 per cent. Prisoners awaiting trial stand at 76 per cent. Their guilt is yet to be proven, and the period of detention is constantly increasing, with one in every four undertrials spending between one to three years in prison pending trial.

4. The average daily spend per inmate stands at a mere Rs 121. This is indicative of inadequate funding, infrastructure and reform – falling far short of the vision of the Model Prisons & Correctional Services Act, 2023. The report also mentions the Amitava Roy Committee on Prison reforms.

5. On legal aid, the report flags concerns over optimal utilisation of funds, uneven human resource deployment and shrinkage in community-based legal aid services like village legal services clinics (one clinic for 163 villages). The legal aid workforce includes 41,553 lawyers and 43,050 paralegal volunteers.

6. On forensics, the report highlights significant capacity constraints – chronic underfunding, outdated infrastructure, and acute shortage of skilled personnel. Similarly, state human rights commissions suffer from persistent vacancies in senior-most functionaries and lack robust complaint disposal mechanisms.

7. On the positives, the report highlighted that in the district judiciary, the share of women judges has increased to 38 per cent. 83 per cent of all police stations in the country have at least one CCTV camera. The government’s spending on strengthening structural capacity saw improvement with increased budget allocations.

Overall Ranking of Large and Mid-sized States

BEYOND THE NUGGET: Rule of Law Index 2024

1. The IJR 2025 contains India’s rank across important indices, one of which is the Rule of Law Index 2024, released by the World Justice Project (WJP).

Source: India Justice Report 2025

2. India ranked 79 out of 142 countries in the Rule of Law Index. It ranks the countries on eight indicators: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil Justice, and criminal justice.

3. In terms of delivering criminal justice, India ranked 89. According to the World Justice Project, “an effective criminal justice system is a key aspect of the rule of law, as it constitutes the conventional mechanism to redress grievances and bring action against individuals for offenses against society.”

4. India ranked 111 on the factor of the Civil Justice of the WJP Rule of Law Index. According to the WJP, “civil justice measures whether civil justice systems are accessible and affordable as well as free of discrimination, corruption, and improper influence by public officials. It also measures the accessibility, impartiality, and effectiveness of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.”

Post read question

(1) The Amitava Roy Committee is related to

(a) Monterey Policy Committee reforms

(b) Digital currency

(c) Infrastructure improvement of railways

(d) Prison reform

(2) Consider the following statements:

1. In the fourth edition of IJR, Kerala ranked first in the overall ranking.

2. The report is published by the Ministry of Law and Justice biennially.

3. It uses the four pillars to measure the justice system — police, prisons, judiciary, and legal aid.

How many of the above statements are correct?

(a) Only one

(b) Only two

(c) All three

(d)  None

(Source: indiajusticereport, worldjusticeproject)

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