India Justice Report 2020

What is the News?
India Justice Report 2020 has been released by TATA Trusts.

India Justice Report 2020:

1. Prepared by: The report has been prepared by Tata Trusts along with the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, CHRI, DAKSH and, TISS-Prayas and, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
2. Parameters: The report analyzed the performance of 18 large and mid-sized states and eight smaller states. It is based on four pillars of the justice delivery system: 1) judiciary, 2) police, 3) prisons  4) legal aid.
3. It also analysed expenditure, vacancies, representation of women and members of SC, ST, and Other Backward Classes of these states.

Key Findings:

Overall Ranking of States:

1. Maharashtra has retained the top spot on delivery of justice to people among large and mid-sized states followed by Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Punjab, and Kerala.
2. Among the small states( with a population of less than 1 crore), Tripura has topped the list followed by Sikkim.

Women’s Representation:

• Women’s representation has marginally increased in the police, prisons and the judiciary. Women now accounts for
  • 10% of all police personnel up from 7% in 2017;
  • 13% prison staff (10% in 2016) and
  • 3% of judges (26.5% in 2017-18).

 Police

1. Women: Bihar leads the list of 25 states for employing most women in its police force at 25.3%. However, women account for only 6.1% in the officer category in Bihar.
   1. Tamil Nadu has the highest percentage of women police officers (24.8%) followed by Mizoram (20.1%).
2. Representation of Castes: Karnataka is the only state to meet its quotas for SC, ST and OBC in both officer cadre and constabulary.
3. People Police Ratio: For every 1,00,000 people, there is just 156 police personnel.
4. Vacancies: Vacancies among the police were 20%. There was a shortfall of police officers in all states except Sikkim. Telangana and West Bengal with vacancies of 40% each had the highest shortfall.

Judiciary

• Judges ratio per citizen: India has one judge per 50,000 citizens as against the recommended number of one per 20,000.
• Women: Only 29% of judges in High Courts across the country are women. Four states — Bihar, Uttarakhand, Tripura, and Meghalaya — have no woman judge in their high courts.
• Vacancies: Except for Chandigarh, no single High Court in states or Union Territories had a full complement of judges. One in every three posts for High Court judges is vacant, and in the subordinate courts, one in every four.

Prisons:

• Under trials: Two-thirds of all prisoners are undertrials, awaiting a conviction.
• Vacancies: Over the last three years, the average vacancy levels across all prison staff remained at a little over 30%.

Source: Indian Express