22 February 2019
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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) accord high priority to access to justice. Goal 16 of the SDGs is to, ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. While issues of access to justice for poor and operational challenges are common knowledge, the issue of budgeting for judiciary, despite its vitality, has not received the attention it deserves. . Of course, a robust system of public provisioning is desirable for basic services like health, education, sanitation etc., but it is particularly critical for delivery of justice as this is a sovereign function, which cannot be performed by private parties.
CBGA in partnership with Daksh (a Civil Society Organisation working for judicial reforms) has recently made a submission to the Fifteenth Finance Commission on budgeting for judiciary with a set of recommendations to address the issues of reform including institutional development, recruitment and budgeting The memorandum is based on an analysis of the Union Budget for judiciary and similar analysis of major statebudgets from 2013-14 to 2018-19. The study comes up with some interesting findings, reflected in the following paragraphs, which bring to fore the state of play on public provisioning for judiciary in its different dimensions, also discussing the way forward.
India spends about 0.01% of the gross domestic product (GDP)on judiciary every year as compared to 0.14 percent by the United States, 0.19 percent by Italy and 0.32 percent by Germany (https://verdict.justia.com/2016/12/20/funding-judiciary-comparative-analysis-united-states-brazil). The total public spending on judiciary, the study says, is less than 0.4% of the gross budgetary expenditure of Centre(0.08% of Union Budget) and of all the states' spending on judiciary (0.61 %) taken together. Around, 92% of the judiciary’s funding is met through expenditure by State Governments while the Centre shares the remaining 8 %. The shares of states like Uttar Pradesh (16.2%) and Maharashtra (9.2%) are considerably higher than the share of Union Government in total expenditure on judiciary.
The proportion of the budget allocated towards justice delivery visavis the total budget varied widely among states, reported the study. It was as high as 2.69% for Delhi and as low as 0.33% for West Bengal. Per capita spending on justice delivery reflected great variance as well. The national average of the per-capita budget on judiciaryin the year 2018-19 was Rs.189. Delhi and Himachal Pradesh reported the highest per capita spending (Rs.643 and Rs.338 respectively) whereas West Bengal and Bihar reported the lowest (Rs.69 and Rs.97 respectively).
Since the judicial system is well known for pendency of cases (about 3.3 crores in present times), therefore, the analysis also took into account the budget per pending case, which again had a wide range. The average budget per pending case acrossall states was reported at Rs.8,071. The values ranged from as high as Rs.19,891 for Delhi and Rs.18,656 for Jammu and Kashmir, to as low as Rs.3,225 for West Bengal and Rs.4,447 for Odisha.
After the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) substantially increased the divisible pool of taxes, thereby increasing the availability of untied resources from Centre to states, it was expected that the states will use the enhanced resources in prioratising people’s needs and increasing allocation to the hitherto neglected sectors. The analysis from the lens of the FFC awards shows substantive increase in budgets for judiciary with varying degrees. The budget increased approximately by 50% in case of Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, whereasit almost doubled for Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh between 2015-16 and 2018-19.
The analysis also yields evidence of an increase in judicial expenditure in absolute terms, as well as in terms of proportion of the combined budgets of the Union Government and the 29 State Governments. This is an encouraging development given that the judiciary has typically been inadequately funded in the past. However, an increase in resource allocation without sensitivity to the varying needs of the judiciary across different States could result in inefficiency. Also, an increase in resource allocation without enhancing the capacity of the system to make use of it may not result in improvement in the performance of judiciary.
Two important dimensions of inequality in budgeting for the judiciary that emerged from the study, included; i) the horizontal imbalance between States, and, ii) the vertical inequality that exists between the states and the Union Government, especially in view of the dependence of the Union Government on the Subordinate Judiciary to apply Union legislations.
The 15th FC is arguably, the most appropriate authority to redress this imbalance because of its mandate of reviewing and recommending the appropriate horizontal and vertical distribution of net proceeds of taxes between the Union and the States, based on an assessment of their requirements. The analysis also brought out the inadequacies in the current budgetary practices in ensuring that the needs of the judiciary are appropriately met. Hence, there is considerable scope for engagement of the Finance Commission in recommending practices and policy reforms which would rectify the current imbalances.
In a nutshell, the memorandum submitted to the FC underscored the need and the ways for institutional reform towards improved access to justice, going beyond the ad-hock measures and temporary solutions. It will be great if the FC were to give these recommendations some thought.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Asadullah at
as*******@cb*******.org
.