28 Million Cases Pending Before Subordinates Courts Across India, Says Report

India’s judicial system has always grappled with a handful of issues—from poor infrastructure to outdated legal frameworks. India Justice Report 2019, which has examined the standards for delivering justice that were promised, released by Tata Trust, shows what issues afflict the judicial system of the country.

As per the report, subordinate courts in India have pendency of 28 million cases—out of which, 2.3 million cases have been pending for more than 10 years and 6.7 million cases for more than five years. This corroborates the claim that Indian judicial system is extremely slow and erratic—which leads to denial of justice to millions of people across the county.

The report points out that 29 states have failed to score more than 60% on its justice delivery system across four key pillars—police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid. To analyse the pillars, seven parameters—budget, human resource, personal workload, diversity, infrastructure and trends—are being used.

In the report that ranked mid-sized states and small states separately, Maharashtra topped the list in terms of delivering justice, followed by Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana. Uttar Pradesh was at the bottom of the list preceded by Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand respectively. Among the small states, Goa topped the list followed by Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram ranked low among the smaller states (where the population is less than one crore each).

(Include ranking map)

While releasing the report, Justice M B Lokur, former Supreme Court judge, described the study as a pioneering one and added that the findings highlighted very serious lacunae in the justice delivery system.

“I fervently hope the judiciary and the government will take note of the significant findings, and the states too will act to urgently plug the gaps in the management of the police, prisons, forensics, justice delivery, legal aid and filling up the vacancies,” he said during the release on November 7, 2019.

Read More: Perils of Legislating From Courtrooms

Maja Daruwala, the chief editor of the India Justice Report 2019, wrote: “Constitutional promises of equality before the law (Article 14) or the universal duty of all governments to ensure the protection of life and personal liberty (Article 21), however, will remain unfulfilled so long as justice remains a luxury accessible only to the privileged and powerful.”

Police

Only 6.4% of the police force has been provided in-service training for dealing with the public. All states and union territories failed in achieving representation of their respective diversity quotas for Schedule Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes.

Representation of religious minority is inadequate in the police force. Between 1999 and 2013, this representation for Muslims has remained consistently low at 3-4%. In Jammu and Kashmir, despite 14.2 per cent Muslim population, its percentage in the police force is as low as nine.

Women are also poorly represented in the police force and constitute only 7% of the 2.4 million-strong police force in the country.

Of total 15,488 police stations in India, 9,932 serve the rural population and 5,036 serve the urban population. One urban police station covers between 33,000 people (in Odisha) and 2,40,000 people (in Gujarat). On the other hand, one rural police station covers between 30,500 people (in Telangana) and 2,33,000 people (in West Bengal). The report also said that 47,557 police personnel are placed to protect 14,842 VIPs across the country.

Prisons

Prisons in India are overcrowded with 114% occupancy rate. Seventeen out of 36 states and union territories have prison occupancy of 100%. Overcrowding in prisons is due to the fact that nearly 68% of under-trials (as on December 2016) are “waiting for investigation, inquiry or trial”. With 180% occupancy, Delhi prisons are the most crowded.

As many as 95,366 inmates are being handled by one sanctioned correctional staff in Uttar Pradesh. Nineteen out of 35 states and union territories spent, on average, Rs 2,500 per month per inmate on food, clothing, medical, vocation and welfare activities. Apart from this, there are only 621 correctional staff across India’s 1,421 prisons.

Judiciary

Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Meghalaya, Tripura, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand are the states that have more than 20% pendency of cases for over five years in the subordinate courts.

Read more: Has Judiciary Become Subservient to Govt?

The representation of women in the lower judiciary accounts for 28% and 12% at the high court level. Seven states and one union territory were found to have no women judges in their high court benches.

At the national level, there is just one subordinate court judge for over 50,000 people in 27 states and union territories

The state of Uttar Pradesh had the lowest clearance rate, with 90.48% cases pending for the last five years or more in the subordinate courts.

Legal aid

As per the present legal aid system, about 80% of the Indian population is eligible to avail free legal services. While since 1995, only 15 million people have been provided legal services and advice by the legal aid services authorities established at the national, state, district and sub-divisional levels.

Tripura, West Bengal, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are yet to establish district legal aid services authorities in all their judicial districts. Whereas, in Uttar Pradesh, there is only one legal aid clinic for every 1,603 villages.

In 2017–2018, a total of 7.85 million cases were disposed of countrywide by Lok Adalats. Out of this, 5.92 million cases were disposed of by the national Lok Adalats and 1.93 million cases were disposed of by Lok Adalats held by the state legal services authorities.

The data from the past seven years was mainly sourced from the National Crime Records Bureau, Bureau of Police Research and Development, National Judicial Data Grid, National Legal Service Authority, Prison Statistics of India (2016), Supreme Court of India, Department of Justice – Ministry of Law & Justice, Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Finance and Revenue Departments of Central and State Government, Census 2011 and other public sources.

Read more: Office of Chief Justice of India Is Public Authority, Falls Under RTI, Says SC