New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed all district courts in the country to switch to video proceedings and authorised presiding officers to adjourn the proceedings if measures to control crowding in court rooms fail.

In the light of the pandemic-induced lockdown, the Supreme Court recently announced hearings would now take place in urgent matters through video conferencing.

Karnataka's justice delivery system ranks sixth in overall justice delivery among 18 large and mid-sized states in India that house more than three crore population.

Karnataka ranked sixth in the country’s first-ever ranking on justice delivery, “India Justice Report 2019” supported by Tata Trusts.

The data shows that of the more than 28,000 trials completed in India’s fast-track courts in 2018, only 22% took less than a year to complete. This is the lowest among all kinds of courts for which the data is given.

The problem of a massive backlog in the judiciary is not new. But courts in India present a stark picture of what happens when the judicial system fails to keep pace with time: there now exists an unprecedented pile-up of over 30 million cases across courts in the country.

UTTAR Pradesh has fared the worst in delivering justice to its people followed by Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, according to the Tata Trust’s India Justice Report 2019 which has examined the standards for delivering justice that was promised and provided by the states and union territories.

The India Justice Report (2019) puts together quantitative assessments of the four pillars of the justice system — namely, police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid — using only government data.

MUMBAI: Maharashtra emerged as the best state for justice delivery in the first such rankings but could not score even 60% in performance in police, prison, judiciary and legal aid — the four pillars of justice.

Maharashtra is followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while among the small states Goa topped the list followed by Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh.