Measuring Transparency in the Indian Judiciary: The Judicial Transparency Index

“One of the greatest dangers to the institutions in a constitutional democracy is the danger of being opaque. When you open up your processes, you generate a degree of accountability, transparency, and you generate a sense of responsiveness to the needs of citizens.”

– Justice (Retd.) DY Chandrachud

Transparency in public institutions is central to constitutional democracy and the rule of law. Within the judiciary, it promotes independence, efficiency, and institutional legitimacy. Despite a stated commitment to openness, however, India’s judiciary has faced persistent concerns regarding transparency in various aspects of its functioning, including appointments, transfers, and disciplinary proceedings. Therefore, to foster greater transparency in courts, this report identifies baseline standards of judicial transparency and provides a measurable framework for its evaluation in the form of the Judicial Transparency Index (‘JTI’).

Benchmarking Judicial Transparency

The JTI defines judicial transparency as the proactive disclosure of information on court websites that enables the public to assess the courts’ functioning. To understand which information needs to be made available, it relies on national and international standards of transparency, including the Right to Information Act, 2005; Article 11 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption and its implementation guide; and the Istanbul Declaration on Transparency in the Judicial Process. The index converts these standards into measurable indicators, providing internal and external stakeholders with a structured tool to advocate for greater judicial transparency. 

The Index

The JTI examines judicial transparency in three broad categories — judicial processes, institutional governance and administration, and judicial and administrative personnel — and contains 18 themes of transparency. Each of the themes are further disaggregated into components along with indicators and scoring guides to help evaluate the indicators.

Judicial Processes

The ‘open courts’ principle mandates transparency in the judicial process to ensure fairness of trials. Historically, it has meant that court proceedings and orders are open and accessible to the public, both directly and through the media. More recently, however, it has also come to include transparency in related processes like case allocation and recusal, due to their significant influence on judicial outcomes. This category contains the following themes under it:

	Public access to court hearings (Page 17)
	Publication of cause lists (Page 19)
	Publication of judgements and orders (Page 21)
	Transparency in case allocation (Page 22)
	Publication of information regarding recusals (Page 24)
	Facilitating media access to courts (Page 25)

Institutional governance and administration

Transparency in court administration offers the public insight into the functioning of courts. By facilitating public oversight, greater administrative transparency can improve judicial efficiency and productivity through the identification of bottlenecks and inefficiencies in court administration. This category consists of the following themes: 

	Publication of annual reports (Page 28)
	Publication of rules, regulations, and manuals governing the court (Page 30)
	Publishing an updated list of all committees and their composition (Page 31)
	Publishing information pertaining to implementation of the PoSH Act (Page 33)