The IJR also flags serious infrastructural and staffing deficiencies across the justice system.India has just 15 judges per million people, far below the Law Commission’s 1987 recommendation of 50.High Courts are operating with 33 per cent vacancies and district courts with 21 per cent, leading to massive workloads up to 15,000 cases per judge in High Courts like Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh.District court judges, on average, are handling 2,200 cases each.Prison overcrowding is another area of concern, with a national average occupancy rate of 131 per cent.Uttar Pradesh has some of the worst instances one in every three jails there holds over 250 per cent of its capacity, the report said.Furthermore, the availability of medical personnel in jails remains inadequate, with the prisoner-doctor ratio standing at 775:1 against the recommended 300:1.In many large states, including Haryana, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, this ratio exceeds 1,000:1.Among the small states, Sikkim retained the top rank, followed by Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh.Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha showed the most improvement among large and mid-sized states between 2022 and 2025.Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand also improved, surpassing Gujarat and Haryana on the improvement index.The report also evaluated the functioning of 25 State Human Rights Commissions and featured essays on access to justice for persons with disabilities and mediation as an alternative dispute resolution method.With India’s prison population projected to hit 6.8 lakh by 2030, the IJR warned that unless systemic reforms are prioritised, the justice system will continue to disproportionately burden the vulnerable and marginalised.The report has sourced information from official portals such as the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Law and Justice, National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) and Prison Statistics India, among others.
Source link
