Covid-19 pandemic exposed India's justice delivery comorbidities

The pandemic highlighted the need for speedier introduction of technology into the justice system

Despite ameliorative steps, structural issues in the justice system proved to be the biggest challenge to justice delivery during the pandemic-induced lockdowns, finds the latest edition of India Justice Report, an initiative of Tata Trusts.

Using pre-Covid data, the report highlights how the “comorbidities” in the four pillars of justice delivery system, namely police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid, stalled access to justice in pandemic times. The report, in its second edition, ranks states and union territories on their capacity to deliver justice, and assess their progress in capacity creation.

“The pandemic has highlighted the need for speedier incorporation of technology into the justice system,” the report noted. However, there are gnawing gaps among states and UTs in their preparedness to adopt technology. As of 2019, about 60 per cent of jails are equipped with video conferencing facilities, the report said. Only 10 states and UTs — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Delhi Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry and Uttarakhand — have these facilities in all jails.

Only Punjab and Himachal Pradesh scored 90 per cent, followed closely by Chhattisgarh (88 per cent), Maharashtra (88 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (86 per cent), when it comes to offering citizen online portal services for filing complaints, obtaining copies of FIRs, among other things. Bihar was the only state without a portal. The report found that most users faced numerous problems of accessibility to these services.

The report also said that only 17.4 per cent of court halls were equipped with video conferencing facilities. Maharashtra continues to lead the table among the 18 large and mid-sized states (with population of over 10 million each), followed by Tamil Nadu (2019: 3rd position), Telangana (2019: 11th), Punjab (2019: 4th) and Kerala (2019: 2nd). Among the seven small states (population of less than 10 million each), Tripura topped (2019: 7th), followed by Sikkim (2019: 2nd) and Goa (2019: 3rd).

The report also highlighted the gender imbalance in the justice system with women comprising only 29 per cent of judges in India. The growing pendency in the justice delivery system was marked by the fact that two-thirds of the country’s prisoners are yet to be convicted. In the last 25 years, since 1995, only 15 million people availed of legal aid, the report added.