In a country where justice is often delayed — and too frequently denied — the India Justice Report 2025 lays bare a stark reality: India’s justice delivery systems are chronically under-resourced, deeply unequal, and dangerously out of step with constitutional promises. Based on the government’s own data, the report captures a nation grappling with persistent vacancies, overwhelmed courts, overcrowded prisons, undertrained police forces, and a legal aid system retreating from the communities that need it most. While isolated sparks of progress flicker — from increased digital infrastructure to a growing number of women in the judiciary — the overwhelming picture is one of inertia and systemic neglect. The findings are a clarion call: without urgent and systemic reform, the promise of justice for all risks becoming a hollow dream.
The IJR 2025 delivers a sobering yet illuminating portrait of the state of justice delivery across the country. Drawing from government data across police, judiciary, prisons, legal aid, and human rights commissions, it presents a powerful call to action. Despite pockets of progress, the national picture remains dominated by chronic capacity deficits, deep systemic inequalities, and a sluggish pace of reform.
A System Under Strain: Deficits and gaps
Across the pillars of justice, major structural weaknesses persist. Police forces nationwide allocate a mere 1.25% of their budget to training, a clear indicator that human capital development remains a low priority. Alarmingly, no state or union territory meets its own reserved quotas for women in the police, exposing deep gender disparities at the very frontline of law enforcement.
The forensic science ecosystem, crucial to modern crime detection and fair trials, is also buckling. Half the sanctioned forensic staff positions across the country remain vacant, paralysing investigations and exacerbating delays. In prisons, conditions continue to deteriorate: 176 prisons report occupancy rates of 200% or more, while over 20% of undertrial prisoners have been incarcerated for one to three years without conviction — an indictment of both police investigation and judicial functioning.
Judicial backlogs have reached staggering heights, with over five crore cases pending across court levels, reflecting a crippling burden on the system. Meanwhile, the promise of judicial dynamism is undermined by the fact that only 4% of cases are initiated suo motu — a marker of proactive judicial intervention — leaving citizens heavily dependent on individual litigation to seek redress.
In the realm of legal aid, there has been a disheartening drop in the number of paralegal volunteers since 2019, and access to basic legal advice in rural and marginalised communities remains worryingly thin.
The crisis extends to prisoner welfare too. For a prison population exceeding 5.7 lakh, the country boasts just 25 sanctioned psychologists or psychiatrists, with 25 states and UTs sanctioning none at all. The absence of mental health support in overcrowded, violent environments exacerbates the cycles of trauma and criminality that prisons are supposed to break.
Green Shoots: Signs of progress
Yet, amidst these dismal findings, rays of hope shine through. A steady expansion of digital infrastructure and gender diversity points towards meaningful, if limited, gains.
By 2025:
- 83% of police stations have at least one CCTV camera, a critical tool for ensuring transparency and accountability in custodial settings.
- 78% of police stations now have women’s helpdesks, offering marginal improvements in gender-sensitive policing.
- 86% of prisons are equipped with at least one video-conferencing facility, easing prisoner access to courts without physical transfers.
- The share of women judges in the district judiciary has climbed to 38%, a vital step towards a more representative bench.
Notably, six states now meet the recommended benchmark of one woman medical officer for every 300 women inmates in prisons, addressing a long-standing neglect of gender-sensitive prison health services.
High courts have managed to maintain case clearance rates exceeding 100% annually since 2017, a promising trend suggesting some resilience even under extreme workload pressures.
Data based on the national findings:
- Who Leads, Who Lags: Rankings across states
Large and mid-sized states (Map 1)
- Karnataka retains the top position among 18 large states, with a composite score of 6.78/10.
- Andhra Pradesh makes a remarkable jump to second place (6.32), up from fifth earlier.
- Telangana ranks third (6.15), showing consistent progress since 2019.
- Kerala and Tamil Nadu complete the top five.
At the bottom:
- Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal occupy the lowest ranks.
- West Bengal drops to the bottom (18th place), swapping places with Uttar Pradesh.
Small states (Map 2)
- Sikkim remains the top-ranked small state (5.20/10).
- Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh follow closely.
- Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Goa slide to the bottom ranks among the seven small states.
- Scorecards of Change: Who improved? (Figure 1: Improvement scorecard)
The report measured whether states had improved between the 2022 and 2025 editions across 68 indicators.
Top improvers among large states:
- Bihar improved on 47 out of 68 indicators — the highest improvement rate.
- Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Karnataka also showed strong positive shifts (around 40 indicators each).
Among small states:
- Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim were the most consistent improvers.
Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh showed moderate improvements, while states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu showed worrying stagnation or decline.
- Diversity and Representation: Still a distant goal?
Diversity rankings (Figure 2)
- Karnataka is the only large state to meet SC, ST, and OBC quotas in both police and judiciary.
- Caste-based diversity in judicial appointments is poor across most states, despite constitutional mandates.
Women’s representation (Figure 3–5)
- Five states — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh, Ladakh, and Tamil Nadu — are moving steadily towards achieving 33% women’s representation in police.
- District judiciary has seen a steady rise in women judges, now at 38%, but High Courts and Supreme Court continue to show male domination.
- Projections suggest that even at the current pace, it will take decades for full gender parity.
- Human Resources: Vacancies and gaps (Figure 7–9)
- Judge-to-population ratios remain poor across almost all states; subordinate courts suffer from 20% judicial vacancies on average.
- Police vacancies have barely improved since 2017.
- Forensics staffing is dangerously low, jeopardising the quality of investigations and trials; Out of nearly 10,000 sanctioned posts across states, nearly 50% remain vacant.
- Justice system intent and budgets (Figure 10-11)
- Budgets for judiciary, legal aid, and police have increased — but primarily towards salaries, with little new investment in training, modernisation, or infrastructure.
- States’ contributions to legal aid budgets remain minimal, indicating a continued lack of political will.
- Pendency of cases (Figure 12-15)
- Cases pending for more than three years account for a large proportion of the backlog in subordinate courts.
- Cases pending more than five years are also rising steadily — indicating systemic failures in ensuring timely justice.
Regional leaders and laggards
Southern states dominate the upper echelons of the justice delivery rankings. Karnataka leads among large states, followed closely by Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Karnataka stands out as the only state that meets Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Classes quotas in both the police and judiciary.
Among smaller states, Sikkim has consistently retained its top position, followed by Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh. In contrast, Goa, Mizoram, and Meghalaya have slipped to the bottom rungs.
At the lower end, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal continue to battle for last place among larger states, highlighting severe structural deficits.
Capacity challenges across the board
The findings also reveal that capacity-building remains elusive across pillars. Police forces struggle with low personnel numbers and training investments. Prisons remain overcrowded and under-resourced. Judicial strength and efficiency remain hostage to persistent vacancies and procedural rigidity. Legal aid services show shrinking outreach efforts. State Human Rights Commissions (SHRCs) display improved case disposal rates, but this masks a worrying trend: many SHRCs reject complaints at the outset rather than offering substantive resolutions, compromising their integrity and public trust.
Moreover, while technology adoption has expanded — with platforms like the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) and NALSA’s legal aid management system — poor internet access, patchy digitisation, and bureaucratic inertia hamper real transformation.
A call to action
The India Justice Report 2025 makes it starkly clear: without serious, sustained investment in the structural capacities of the justice system, without a genuine commitment to inclusion, transparency, and systemic reform, India’s vision of equitable, accessible justice will remain out of reach.
Data from the report underscores that while isolated improvements are visible, the system as a whole still falters. Fragmented, underfunded, and often discriminatory, India’s justice institutions need not just incremental changes but a concerted, well-resourced overhaul.
The findings are not just a mirror of current realities, but a roadmap for an ambitious, necessary transformation — one where justice, as promised by the Constitution, can become a lived reality for all.
The complete report may be read here.
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