The delivery of justice forms the cornerstone of a society that upholds the rule of law. But the delivery of justice cannot be achieved with lofty rhetoric: it is contingent on the robustness of the institutions of justice. The India Justice Report 2025, released last week, provides a sobering assessment of the justice delivery mechanism. A joint endeavour by six prominent non-governmental organisations and think tanks, the report ranks states based on their capacity to deliver justice by assessing data on the structural and financial capacity of four key pillars — the police, judiciary, prison, and state Human Rights Commissions — over a three-year period (2022-2025). While the IJR did highlight some achievements, such as the increased availability of video-conferencing and open facilities in prisons, the losses outweigh the gains. The IJR, for instance, found that gender diversity remains abysmally low; not a single state or Union territory has met its reservation target for women in the police. The judicial backlog has risen by 20%, 19 states witnessed a decline in legal aid budgets, and a high number of undertrials continue to populate prisons. Southern states dominate the rankings, with Karnataka — the only state that has met the caste diversity representation in the police and the judiciary — taking the top spot in overall performance. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have followed, securing the top five rankings among 18 large and medium-sized states. While the northern states hover at the bottom, Sikkim leads the cohort of seven small states. West Bengal, disconcertingly, has figured at the bottom among the large states.
The IJR has also drawn attention to some dichotomies that merit attention. For example, despite ranking last, Bengal tops the SHRC parameter with 96.9% of cases cleared — higher than the clearance capacity of the National Human Rights Commission. This achievement, the report cautions, can be misleading as there is a practice of discarding cases at the onset without deploying resources to address grievances comprehensively. Another contradiction is the high percentage of undertrial prisoners and the low percentage of women employed in the police in Karnataka, despite its top ranking. This shows that the progress made by even the best- performing states are being hindered by institutional challenges and deep-rooted prejudices that continue to impair justice delivery. Filling up vacancies, strengthening the legal aid services, reducing the burden of undertrial prisoners, and ensuring gender-inclusive recruitment, among other reformative measures, need to be prioritised by all states. Unless the institutions of justice are well-equipped, justice will continue to elude a large number of Indians.