Designing Justice: The Need for Accessible, User-Centric District Court Infrastructure in India: Introduction

In the 2024 Netflix series Maamla Legal Hai, the fictional “Patparganj District Court” is painted in an unflattering, but honest, light. In the absence of dedicated offices, lawyers set up stalls in the parking lots and pathways, blocking public entrances and turning accessibility ramps into seats for overflowing piles of paper. Judges sit in cramped courtrooms, lacking fans and other amenities. Litigants are an afterthought for the system, wandering around the courts without clear directions regarding court-halls and procedure or clarity regarding the progress of their case. Court staff sit in dimly-ventilated, damp rooms and lack access to canteens or washrooms. 

Any person who has been to any District Court in India can attest to the fact that while the Patparganj District Court is fictional, the concerns the show highlights are very much real. Courts are the physical representation of the space in which the process of seeking and delivering justice operates. However, the practical obstacles hindering this process leave much to be desired. 

Current Gaps in Design and Planning

In 2019, the Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (“JALDI”) team at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy conducted a survey to assess the state of physical infrastructure at 665 district courts in India. The report, “Building Better Courts: Surveying the Infrastructure of District Courts” documented the abysmal manner in which our courts function. For example, although 88% of 665 district courts in India had washrooms, only 40% of these were found to be fully functional. Nearly 100 district courts did not have washrooms for women. Only 20% had guide maps to help first-time visitors navigate the court, and only 27% had ramps/lifts for wheelchair users. 

This results in courts becoming intimidating, unwelcoming, and uncomfortable spaces. For first-time litigants in particular, physically navigating the justice system adds an additional burden, ensuring that the process becomes the punishment instead of a pathway to resolution. Often, special or additional needs of users, such as those with physical disabilities, past trauma, or socio-cultural barriers, are invisibilised and forgotten. Public trust in the judiciary’s ability to effectively ensure justice, therefore, fades over time. 

The judiciary is a public institution; therefore, it must ensure that it creates space for meaningful participation of all users in the pursuit of justice. This calls for a serious revision of the manner in which court infrastructure is designed and implemented in India. However, judicial infrastructure planning guidelines have not been regularly updated to account for the needs of various stakeholders. 

In 2012, the Supreme Court established the National Court Management System (“NCMS”) Committee to analyse and upgrade the functioning of courts in various spaces, including inter alia case management, human resource management, and design and budgeting for courts. The 2012 Baseline Report of the Sub-Committee on infrastructure provided certain guidelines for court design, which were later updated in 2024. These guidelines continue to be the primary reference for Indian courts. However, as we have seen above, these guidelines have rarely been implemented in practice. 

Further, although the 2024 NCMS guidelines mention the role played by various other statutory and policy obligations such as the Harmonised Guidelines for Universal Accessibility in India, 2016 and 2021; Guidelines for Recording of Evidence of Vulnerable Witnesses (2023) and e-Courts Phase III Vision Document (2023), the implications of these requirements have not yet been fully realised in the guidelines. Additionally, specific provisions for accessibility contemplated by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (2016) are still conceived of in silos rather than as an integral part of the Court design process, all the way from initial planning to execution and monitoring. A comprehensive, holistic approach to Court planning which takes into account the needs of all users is crucial. 

Moving towards Participatory Justice 

For a holistic conceptualisation of court design, it is crucial to take into account the manner in which the physical space of the Court Complex mediates the different ways in which various users interact with each other. Court design must move towards celebrating justice as a participatory act for which all users have an equal right to access and to be included. This can be achieved by taking into account their lived experiences and understanding their specific requirements. 

Over the last few years, the JALDI team has collaborated with experts in the fields of spatial design, accessibility, security, acoustics, technology, etc., to draw attention to the infrastructural gaps and requirements of Indian courts, particularly at the District Court level. Detailed solutions and recommendations were documented in the “Court Design Handbook: Design Guide for a User-Centric Court Complex”, released in 2024.

This series documents our findings with regard to the requirements of three primary categories of users – advocates, judges, and litigants – and provides recommendations for optimising courts’ functionality. Each article follows a day in the life of a typical court user, as drawn from our experiences, to showcase everyday barriers and challenges faced by them in their physical interactions with courts and other users. The narrative approach aims to highlight the areas in which significant interventions are needed, in order to ensure meaningful justice for all.

 Priyamvadha Shivaji and Shreya Tripathy are Senior Resident Fellows, Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

[Ed Note: The piece has been edited by Saranya Ravindran and published by Vedang Chouhan]