Skip to main content

Gujarat slips in India Justice Report 2025: From model state to mid-table performer

Overall ranking in IJR reports
By Rajiv Shah 
The latest India Justice Report (IJR), prepared by legal experts with the backing of several civil society organisations and aimed at ranking the capacity of states to deliver justice, has found Gujarat—considered by India's rulers as a model state for others to follow—slipping to the 11th position from fourth in 2022.
Assessing 18 major states, identified as "large and mid-sized states", the 212-page report uses the "filters of human resources, infrastructure, budgets, workload and diversity" to evaluate the capacity of four core pillars of the justice system: police, prisons, judiciary, and legal aid.
There is a separate assessment of 23 State Human Rights Commissions across as many states, where the report ranks Gujarat 20th, with only three states performing worse—Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. However, the report does not provide comparative data for previous years.
Offering a comprehensive picture from the previous three IJR reports on the four pillars of social justice—police, prisons, judiciary, and legal aid—the report shows that Gujarat steadily improved its position from 8th in 2019, to 6th in 2020, and a significant jump to 4th in 2022, before slipping sharply to 11th in 2025.
Judiciary, Legal Aid
Jointly prepared by the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Daksh, and TISS-Prayas, which hired legal experts to separately assess each of the four pillars, the report states that the rankings reflect the year-on-year efforts made by state governments to improve justice administration on the ground.
The report maintains that the IJR would serve as "an easy but comprehensive tool" for policymakers to adopt "holistic policy frameworks" and identify "low-hanging fruit which, if tackled early on, can set off a chain reaction reformative of the whole." It would also assist donors, civil society, and the business community by offering objective data around which key stakeholders can shape their recommendations.
Claiming that this could trigger "participatory dialogues between governments and active citizens of disparate ideologies, underpinned by objective facts rather than premised in opinion", the report argues it would enhance the "chances for reforms through consensus building."
Based on publicly available data from various government bodies and the judiciary, the report finds that South Indian states—Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu—consistently outperform all 18 major states across the four key pillars of justice. In contrast, states performing worse than Gujarat include Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Police, Jails
Analysing the four pillars separately, the report finds that Gujarat’s performance remains around the 9th position for police and prisons across all four IJR assessments. However, it significantly declines in the other two pillars: in judiciary, Gujarat slips to the 14th position in 2025 from 7th in 2019, 8th in 2020, and 9th in 2022; and in legal aid, it falls to 13th in 2025 from 6th in 2019, 9th in 2020, and 3rd in 2022.
The report attributes Gujarat’s poor judicial ranking to multiple factors: per capita spending on the judiciary dropped to Rs 101—the lowest among all 18 states; the population per High Court judge is 3,836,147—the highest in India; subordinate court judges face a 31.1% vacancy rate, while the High Court staff vacancy is at 46.6%—again the highest in India.
Regarding the legal aid category, Gujarat's low ranking, the report suggests, may stem from its Lok Adalats not only taking up "relatively few cases", but also having the lowest clearance rate in India—only 11,000 matters cleared, which amounts to just 2%. In contrast, the next better performers were Rajasthan with 3% and Maharashtra with 9%.
SHRCs
The report emphasises that Lok Adalats are a critical component of India’s legal aid framework, designed to amicably resolve disputes outside the formal court system. "These forums are meant to reduce court backlogs, promote speedy justice, and foster a culture of amicable settlement," it states.
While making few comments on individual states' performance, the report notes, "The number of people served by an urban police station varies vastly—from 8,500 in a small state like Arunachal to 2.8 lakh in Gujarat."
As for social justice in police recruitment, the report observes that, nationally, "fulfilling Scheduled Caste (SC) quotas lags behind meeting Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) quotas." It adds, "Only four states—Gujarat, Manipur, Karnataka, and Himachal Pradesh—met their SC quotas at both officer and constabulary levels."
Regarding State Citizen Portals, intended to enhance public engagement with law enforcement by offering services such as FIR registration, complaint submission, and cybercrime reporting, the report laments, "no state portal offered the complete suite of mandated services." However, it acknowledges that "Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh stand out for providing 90 per cent of the services," and that "Gujarat and Sikkim maintain well-updated and user-friendly websites."

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

Countrywide protest by gig workers puts spotlight on algorithmic exploitation

By A Representative   A nationwide protest led largely by women gig and platform workers was held across several states on February 3, with the Gig & Platform Service Workers Union (GIPSWU) claiming the mobilisation as a success and a strong assertion of workers’ rights against what it described as widespread exploitation by digital platform companies. Demonstrations took place in Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Maharashtra and other states, covering major cities including New Delhi, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Mumbai, along with multiple districts across the country.
Post a Comment
»

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.
59 comments
»

CFA flags ‘welfare retreat’ in Union Budget 2026–27, alleges corporate bias

By Jag Jivan  The advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has sharply criticised the Union Budget 2026–27 , calling it a “budget sans kartavya” that weakens public welfare while favouring private corporations, even as inequality, climate risks and social distress deepen across the country.
Post a Comment
»

From water scarcity to sustainable livelihoods: The turnaround of Salaiya Maaf

By Bharat Dogra   We were sitting at a central place in Salaiya Maaf village, located in Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh, for a group discussion when an elderly woman said in an emotional voice, “It is so good that you people came. Land on which nothing grew can now produce good crops.”
Post a Comment
»

Paper guarantees, real hardship: How budget 2026–27 abandons rural India

By Vikas Meshram   In the history of Indian democracy, the Union government’s annual budget has always carried great significance. However, the 2026–27 budget raises several alarming concerns for rural India. In particular, the vague provisions of the VBG–Ram Ji scheme and major changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) have put the future of rural workers at risk. A deeper reading of the budget reveals that these changes are not merely administrative but are closely tied to political and economic priorities that will have far-reaching consequences for millions of rural households.
Post a Comment
»

Penpa Tsering’s leadership and record under scrutiny amidst Tibetan exile elections

By Tseten Lhundup*  Within the Tibetan exile community, Penpa Tsering is often described as having risen through grassroots engagement. Born in 1967, he comes from an ordinary Tibetan family, pursued higher education at Delhi University in India, and went on to serve as Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile from 2008 to 2016. In 2021, he was elected Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), becoming the second democratically elected political leader of the administration after Lobsang Sangay. 
Post a Comment
»

'Gandhi Talks': Cinema that dares to be quiet, where music, image and silence speak

By Vikas Meshram   In today’s digital age, where reels and short videos dominate attention spans, watching a silent film for over two hours feels almost like an act of resistance. Directed by Kishor Pandurang Belekar, “Gandhi Talks” is a bold cinematic experiment that turns silence into language and wordlessness into a powerful storytelling device. The film is not mere entertainment; it is an experience that pushes the viewer inward, compelling reflection on life, values, and society.
Post a Comment
»

From Puri to the State: How Odisha turned the dream of drinkable tap water into policy

By Hans Harelimana Hirwa, Mansee Bal Bhargava   Drinking water directly from the tap is generally associated with developed countries where it is considered safe and potable. Only about 50 countries around the world offer drinkable tap water, with the majority located in Europe and North America, and a few in Asia and Oceania. Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, and Singapore have the highest-quality tap water, followed by Canada, New Zealand, Japan, the USA, Australia, the UK, Costa Rica, and Chile.
1 comment
»

Frugal funds, fading promises: Budget 2026 exposes shrinking space for minority welfare

By Syed Ali Mujtaba*  The Ministry of Minority Affairs was established in 2006 during the tenure of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, following the findings of the Sachar Committee, which documented that Muslims were among the most educationally and economically disadvantaged communities in India. The ministry was conceived as a corrective institutional response to deep structural inequalities faced by religious minorities, particularly Muslims, through focused policy interventions.
Post a Comment
»