Shillong, Aug 10: Meghalaya has dropped in the ranking of states according to their structural capacity to deliver justice, compiled by the India Justice Report (IJR).
The rankings are divided between small states, of which Meghalaya is one, and the rest. The seven small states comprise Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura. Three North East states – Assam, Nagaland and Manipur – do not feature in the rankings at all.
The rankings of small states reveal that Sikkim has retained its top position in this fourth edition of the IJR. Himachal, Arunachal and Tripura occupy the middle ground but Meghalaya, Mizoram and Goa showed a dip in their most recent rankings to fifth, sixth and seventh places respectively.
The IJR is a first of its kind national periodic reporting that ranks the capacity of states to deliver justice. This report is based on publicly available data of different government entities and the judiciary. This IJR is a collaborative effort undertaken in partnership with DAKSH, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Common Cause, Centre for Social Justice, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and TISS-Prayas.
Meghalaya was fourth among the seven states in IJR 3 of 2022 but even this year’s fifth place is better than the seventh place ranking achieved in IJR 2 of 2020. Sikkim has always been either first or second, while Goa has seen a progressive decline from first in the inaugural IJR of 2019 to last place this year.
Meghalaya’s ranking has shown improvements in prisons (from sixth to fourth) and the judiciary (fifth to third) but a worsening in police (third to fifth) and legal aid (third to fifth).
In specific measures, Meghalaya had the second-lowest percentage of female police personnel in any of the ranked states across the country at just 5.8 percent, only higher than Tripura (5.7 percent). By contrast, Bihar was at the top with 23.7 percent.
However, by proportion of female police officers Meghalaya does not do too badly with 8.9 percent, which is lower than only two other small states – Mizoram (18.2 percent) and Goal (16.3 percent). The state with the best rank is Tamil Nadu with 20.1 percent.
In the judiciary, there is a huge disparity in female judges of subordinate courts and the High Court. Meghalaya is one of only three states in the study that does not have any female High Court judges, the others being Uttarakhand and Tripura. However, in the lower courts, 60.7 percent of judges are female, putting Meghalaya second in the rankings, only behind Goa’s 70.0 percent.
In terms of the judge to population ratio, no state has been able to get close to the Law Commission’s recommendation of 50 judges per 10 lakh people (only the small Union territory of Lakshadweep has managed it). Meghalaya, however, is lower than all the other six small states by this metric with just 17.3 judges per 10 lakh people. The IJR, though, does provide figures for the three non-ranked states of Assam (14.4), Nagaland (12.3) and Manipur (15.8) and they are actually even worse than Meghalaya.
Another area where the state is worse than average is in the field of forensics. The IJR 4 data shows that Meghalaya has vacancies in 55.6 percent of its sanctioned scientific forensics staff, which is higher than the national average of 49.1 percent and poorer than any other small state measured. Among forensics administrative staff, 33.3 percent of posts remain vacant in Meghalaya, which is under the national average of 46.6 percent.
The state does better in terms of vacancies in other areas. Meghalaya has vacancies in just 14.4 percent of sanctioned posts for constables and 12.3 percent for police officers; these figures are for January 2023. It has no vacancies in High Court judges and just 12.2 percent vacancies in High Court staff.
The one area where it does badly, indeed Meghalaya is the worst performing state by this metric, is subordinate court judges where there are 43.4 percent vacancies in sanctioned posts. Given this, it is no surprise to learn that 51.6 percent of cases in subordinate courts in Meghalaya are still pending after three years (and 36.7 percent after five years). This is the worst figure for any of the small states and the fifth worst among all states. Contrast this with pending cases in the High Court where only 0.7 percent are over 20 years old and only 8.1 percent between 10 and 20 years old. This puts Meghalaya second and third-best in the country respectively and well below the all-India average of around 25 percent.
Meghalaya also does not perform well in the prisons and legal aid areas but when considered together with police and the judiciary, the state’s five-year trend is positive and Meghalaya scores highest among the seven small states, keeping its rank from 2022.
