22% sanctioned posts for Judges vacant; HC 30% short

For 1.4 billion people, India has about 20,076 judges with about 22% sanctioned posts vacant, reveals the 2022 India Justice Report (IJR) released in New Delhi on April 4. Vacancy among High Court judges is at 30% when calculated against the sanctioned strength as India had (as of December 2022), 19 judges per million population and a backlog of 4.8 crore cases, IJR points out. The Law Commission had desired, as early as 1987, it should be 50 judges per million in a decade's time from then, it notes.

The IJR is India's only ranking of states on the basis of delivery of Justice and was initiated by Tata Trusts in 2019, The just released one is the third edition. The report is brought out in partnership with the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS–Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives, IJR's data partner.

The 2022 IJR ranks Karnataka at the top of the 18 large and mid-sized states (with population of over one crore each), followed by Tamil Nadu (2020: 2nd), Telangana (2020: 3rd) Gujarat (2020: 6th) and Andhra Pradesh (2020: 12th). The list of seven Small States (population less than one crore each) was topped by Sikkim (2020: 2nd), followed by Arunachal Pradesh (2020: 5th) and Tripura (2020: 1st). The ranking is decided on the basis of the performance of the states in capacitating their justice delivery structures to effectively deliver mandated services.

The report depends on the latest official statistics, sourced from the authoritative agencies and brings together otherwise siloed data on the four pillars of justice delivery – police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid. Each pillar is analysed through the prism of budgets, human resources, workload, diversity, infrastructure, and trends (intention to improve over a five-year period), against the state's own declared standards and benchmarks. The third IJR also separately assesses the capacity of the 25 State Human Rights Commissions.

The reports notes that in the police, women are only about 11.75%, despite their numbers doubling in the last decade. About 29% of the officer positions are vacant. The police to population ratio is 152.8 per lakh, while the international standard is 222.

It also points out that Indian prisons are over-occupied at over 130%, with more than two-thirds of the prisoners (77.1%) awaiting the completion of investigation or trial.

The analysis also reveals that most states have not fully utilised funds given to them by the Centre. Their own increase in spending on the police, prisons, and judiciary has not kept pace with overall increase in state expenditure.

The justice system as a whole remains affected by low budgets. Except for two union territories, Delhi and Chandigarh, no state spends more than 1% of its total annual expenditure on the judiciary.

India's per capita spend on free legal aid — which 80% of the population is eligible for — is a meagre ₹3.87 per annum.

"The third IJR shows that states are making a substantive improvement over the last two ones in terms of adding new dimensions on diversity, training, and infrastructure. Some states have dramatically improved their performance but there is a lot that needs to be done on the whole. So far as the police is concerned there does appear to be a shortage of women officers in police. Legal aid is doing better but still a lot of people need to be provided quality free legal aid, we need to increase the confidence that people have in our services," Justice (retd.) Madan B. Lokur, says.