The India Justice Report
DAKSH Podcast
Valay Singh of the India Justice Report (IJR) presents a data-driven analysis of India's justice system capacity, drawing on findings from reports published in 2019
Key takeaways
- India faces a judge-to-population ratio of less than 20 per 10 lakh citizens, drastically below the Law Commission's recommended 50 and far behind the US (>150) and China (>300).
- Over 5 crore cases are pending across Indian courts, with judges handling an average of 2,500 cases each, making timely resolution mathematically impossible under current conditions.
Main topics
- Judiciary capacity and judge vacancies
- Legal aid authorities and Lok Adalats
Notable quotes
"Access to justice is a fundamental right that is guaranteed to all citizens by Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India."
Conclusion
The episode underscores that India's justice delivery is severely constrained by structural
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:03) Hi, I'm Valay Singh, project lead of the India Justice Report. Together with our friends at Daksh, we publish a first-of-its-kind data-driven periodic report that measures the capacity of the four pillars of our justice system, that is the police, the prisons, the judiciary and legal aid in each state of India. On this episode of the Daksh podcast, I am going to share some of our findings and insights on the state of India's justice system. Speaker 2 (0:39) Let us understand the numbers in context so you and I together appreciate where we are as a country and the opportunities that lie before us. Speaker 2 (0:52) Do you recall the last time you willingly interacted with any of the pillars of justice I mentioned right now? Don't worry, that hesitation you're feeling is not unique. Speaker 2 (1:04) Back in 2017, Daksh conducted the Access to Justice survey. They found that going through the formal justice delivery system is more often than not the last resort for most Indians. As a nation, we have come to believe that the system as a whole doesn't work for us at all. Access to justice is a fundamental right that is guaranteed to all citizens by Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India. Speaker 2 (1:36) In October 2019, we published our first India Justice Report. Some of the key findings of that report were, in the overall prison population, two in every three prisoners were under trials. There were 2.8 crore cases pending across Indian subordinate courts. Of the 25 high courts across India, only the state of Sikkim, which hosts a population of under 7 lakhs, or just 2 % of the population of New Delhi, could claim that it had achieved 80 % of the required judges' roster. All the other high courts had judge vacancies above 20%. And of the 36 subordinate courts we considered, only 16 had vacancies under 20%. That is where we were. A little over a year ago, in April 2023, In spite of the many challenges the COVID-19 pandemic threw at us, we published the Third India Justice Report 2022 or IJR. Let's start with the people assigned to adjudicate and deliver justice, the judiciary and judges. Speaker 2 (2:53) For our current research, apart from the High Court of Sikkim and the district courts in Chandigarh, no court works with its full complement of judges. Though five of the 25 high courts can now claim vacancies under 20%, the national average of high court judicial