India
Oversight and accountability in India
A statutory National Human Rights Commission, a judge-led collegium for the higher judiciary, and State-level police-complaints authorities of uneven coverage.
Facts on this page were checked against their sources on .
- National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)
- A statutory body under the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993, whose Chairperson must be a former Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge; State Human Rights Commissions exist under the same Act. Described from reputable secondary sources.
- Judicial appointments (the collegium)
- India has no statutory judicial-appointments council: judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts are appointed through a judge-led collegium, restored after the Supreme Court struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission in 2015. Control of the subordinate judiciary rests with the High Courts (Article 235).
- Police-complaints authorities
- There is no single national police-complaints body; State Police Complaints Authorities were mandated by the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006) and implemented unevenly through State police laws. Described from established record, not a primary-fetched judgment.
The same idea, explained generally
- Why do justice systems need oversight?
Justice institutions hold coercive powers, often operate out of public view, and make decisions that are hard to reverse. This guide explains the oversight mechanisms built to detect and correct errors, and their limits.
- What is justice?
Justice is the principle that people should be treated according to rules that apply equally to everyone, decided by bodies that are authorised, constrained, and answerable. This guide explains what that means institutionally.
Sources
Sources
The Constitution of India (as on 1 May 2024)
Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice (Legislative Department) · Legislation · 1950-01-26 · link verified 2026-07-27
The official Constitution of India PDF (Ministry of Law and Justice, "As on 1st May, 2024"), fetched and text-extracted; the Seventh Schedule entries and the cited articles were re-confirmed verbatim in two independent passes. Supports the federal division of legislative power under the Seventh Schedule (Article 246): List II (State List) Entry 1 "Public order", Entry 2 "Police (including railway and village police)", Entry 4 "Prisons, reformatories, Borstal institutions… and persons detained therein" — so police, public order and prisons are exclusive STATE subjects; List III (Concurrent List) Entry 1 "Criminal law…", Entry 2 "Criminal procedure…", Entry 11A "Administration of Justice; constitution and organisation of all courts, except the Supreme Court and the High Courts" — so the criminal codes and subordinate-court organisation are concurrent (national); and List I (Union List) Entry 8 "Central Bureau of Intelligence and Investigation". Also supports Article 50 (separation of the judiciary from the executive), Article 124 (the Supreme Court of India), Article 141 (Supreme Court law binding on all courts), Article 214 ("There shall be a High Court for each State"), and Article 235 (High Court control over district and subordinate courts).