Need for index

Creation of a judicial performance index that could help High Courts and their chief justices keep track of the performance and processes at district courts and subordinate levels for reducing delay.

About the Index

• Proposed the introduction of a judicial performance index to reduce delays and the outsourcing of non-core functions of the police to private agencies or other government departments.
• Also  NITI Ayog mooted changes in criminal justice and procedural laws, a repeal of all irrelevant legislation by March 2019 and reforms in land ownership laws — which account for 67% of litigants in civil suits.
• The index should be ‘the first step’ in judicial system reforms that Aayog its draft three-year action plan.
• The performance index for courts will entail fixing of non-mandatory time frames for different types of cases to benchmark when a case has been delayed.
• The index can also include certain progress on process steps already approved by High Courts and such an annual evaluation should give judges in High Courts a sense of where they are failing and what they need to fix.

Quality of policing

• To improve the quality of policing, create a task force to identify non-core functions that can be outsourced to private agents or government departments in order to reduce the workload of the police.
• United Nations norms of 222 per lakh population not yet reached.
• India’s police to population ratio should reach to 222 per lakh, over the next seven years from the current level of 137.
• Red-flagging the adverse implications of crimes against women beyond the obvious horror for affected individuals.
• Aayog has proposed to push for greater hiring of women in the police force, with a target of 30% of all new recruits.

Source : The Hindu 

GS II ; Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary Ministries and Departments of the Government