UP, Bihar at bottom of India’s justice league.

Source – indiatoday.in

Law and order has always been a major concern in the two big states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Despite claims of improvement over the years by respective state leaderships, a recent report by Tata Trusts has statistically proven that these two states have the worst justice system in India.

The study, titled India Justice Report’, which Tata Trusts published on Thursday, developed an index of justice system across the country using four parameters police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid. An assessment of 18 bigger states revealed that UP and Bihar have the worst justice system in India. While UP ranked at the bottom of the list, Bihar stood at number 17.

On the basis of these parameters, a score was allotted to each state on a scale of 10. None of the states had the perfect score. UP and Bihar got a score of 3.32 and 4.02 respectively. Following them from the bottom were Jharkhand (4.3), Uttarakhand (4.49), Rajasthan (4.52) and Andhra Pradesh (4.77).

The state with the best justice system according to the report is Maharashtra with a score of 5.92. It is followed by Kerala (5.85), Tamil Nadu (5.76), Punjab (5.53) and Haryana (5.53).

The average score of all the bigger states turned out to be 4.95, which means more than 50 per cent conditions to get a perfect score for the justice system have not been met. In fact, of the 18 big states surveyed, 11 had a score of above 5.

Collectively, the data paints a grim picture. It highlights that each individual sub-system is starved for budgets, manpower and infrastructure; no state is fully compliant with the standards it has set for itself. Governments are content to create ad hoc and patchwork remedies to cure deeply embedded systemic failures. Inevitably, the burden of all this falls on the public, the report says.

Why UP, Bihar rank at the bottom

A deeper look at the statistics reveals that in almost every aspect, UP and Bihar exchanged the last and second last position.

Policing

The study took several factors to assess the police system in the states, ranging from modernisation, inducing women, diversity, budgeting, human resource planning and infrastructure.

On this front, the best score was achieved by Tamil Nadu 6.49. UP received a score of 2.98, whereas Bihar got 3.77. UP fared poor in terms of budgeting, spending on police per person, vacancies and diversity.

Prisons

This parameter was assessed on various factors ranging from overcrowding, inclusion of women staff, adequate human resources, budgeting, infrastructure, etc.

Jharkhand fared the worst with a score of 3.46. It was followed by Uttarakhand (3.72), Punjab (4.35), Andhra Pradesh (4.35) and UP (4.42). Surprisingly, Bihar stood at number six with a score of 5.61. The best in this regard was Kerala with a score of 7.18.

Judiciary

This parameter was assessed on availability of judges, clearance of cases, spending on judiciary, etc.

Bihar, with a score of 2.41, fared the worst in this regard. It was followed by UP (3.7), Karnataka (3.76), Uttarakhand (4.17) and Jharkhand (4.3). Tamil Nadu again featured on the top in terms of judiciary with a score of 6.99. It was followed by Punjab (6.57), Haryana (6.23) and Maharashtra (5.96).

On an average, Bihar saw a bleak growth in expenditure on judiciary in comparison to total spending. From 2011 to 2016, the state expenditure rose by 17.8 per cent; however, expenditure on judiciary rose by only 8 per cent.

Legal aid

The report also highlighted the importance of legal aid. It said that almost 80 per cent of India’s 1.25-billion population is eligible for free legal aid, but only 15 million people have availed it since 1995.

Here too, the parameter was assessed on the basis of budgeting, human resources, diversity, infrastructure and work load. With a score of 2.5, UP fared worst, followed by Uttarakhand (4.46), Bihar (4.52) and Odisha (4.61).