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

From plagiarism to proxy exams: Galgotias and systemic failure in education

By Sandeep Pandey* Shock is being expressed at Galgotias University being found presenting a Chinese-made robotic dog and a South Korean-made soccer-playing drone as its own creations at the recently held India AI Impact Summit 2026, a global event in New Delhi. Earlier, a UGC-listed journal had published a paper from the university titled “Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis,” which became the subject of widespread ridicule. Following the robotic dog controversy coming to light, the university has withdrawn the paper. These incidents are symptoms of deeper problems afflicting the Indian education system in general. Galgotias merely bit off more than it could chew.

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

Farewell to Saleem Samad: A life devoted to fearless journalism

By Nava Thakuria* Heartbreaking news arrived from Dhaka as the vibrant city lost one of its most active and committed citizens with the passing of journalist, author and progressive Bangladeshi national Saleem Samad. A gentleman who always had issues to discuss with anyone, anywhere and at any time, he passed away on 22 February 2026 while undergoing cancer treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. He was 74.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

From ancient wisdom to modern nationhood: The Indian story

By Syed Osman Sher South of the Himalayas lies a triangular stretch of land, spreading about 2,000 miles in each direction—a world of rare magic. It has fired the imagination of wanderers, settlers, raiders, traders, conquerors, and colonizers. They entered this country bringing with them new ethnicities, cultures, customs, religions, and languages.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

Conversion laws and national identity: A Jesuit response response to the Hindutva narrative

By Rajiv Shah A recent book, " Luminous Footprints: The Christian Impact on India ", authored by two Jesuit scholars, Dr. Lancy Lobo and Dr. Denzil Fernandes , seeks to counter the current dominant narrative on Indian Christians , which equates evangelisation with conversion, and education, health and the social services provided by Christians as meant to lure -- even force -- vulnerable sections into Christianity.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

Search This Blog