Why in News?

• Recently, India Justice Report (IJR) 2022, Karnataka has achieved the top rank among the 18 large and mid-sized states in delivery of justice with populations over one crore.

Highlights

• The IJR is an initiative of Tata Trusts in collaboration with Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative among others.
• It was first published In 2019.
• It assesses the performance of states in terms of justice delivery, by considering several parameters such as police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid to assess the overall performance of each state.
• The list of 7 Small States with a population less than one crore each, was topped by Sikkim which was ranked second in 2020.
• Sikkim has been followed by Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. The State of Goa is at rank Seven which is the lowest
• The Indian judiciary is facing a severe shortage of judges and infrastructure, leading to rising pendency, increasing caseloads, and declining case clearance rates (CCR) in lower courts.
• As of December 2022, the High Courts were functioning with only 778 judges against a sanctioned strength of 1,108 judges.
• The number of cases pending per judge is rising in most states over the last five years, while the sanctioned strength has remained the same.
• The average pendency In High Courts is highest in Uttar Pradesh (11.34 years) and West Bengal (9.9 years), while it is lowest in Tripura (1 year), Sikkim (1.9 years), and Meghalaya (2.1 years).