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Every year, on 9th November, India marks the National Legal Services Day. It is a significant moment when we have an opportunity to examine the institutional architecture that shapes the aspiration to protect the rule of law and promote access to justice. The conceptual foundations of justice are most often demonstrated in the lived experiences of the person seeking it. For a person who is awaiting unpaid wages, receiving those wages will constitute justice. For example, it will be justice if a woman claiming maintenance receives it. For an undertrial awaiting legal representation, receiving that assistance will constitute justice. All these facets of justice acquire constitutional significance when institutions designed to protect justice respond efficiently and effectively.

This year, as we celebrate the National Legal Services Day, we ought to ask a fundamental question: How can India recognize the right to justice in a meaningful manner so that it becomes the lived reality of every Indian citizen? This occasion also marks the commencement of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, which came into force on 9 November 1995. Its more salient constitutional foundation is Article 39A of the Constitution—a Directive Principle of State Policy—which exhorts the state to promote equal justice and provide free legal aid so that all other challenges in access to justice may be surmounted. The legal services that a society provides create institutional commitment for fulfilling a constitutional responsibility. The legal aid movement in India was promoted through state initiatives, leadership within the judiciary, and among law schools so that there was a strong recognition of formal equality needing institutional support. In 1980, the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes, led by Justice P.N. Bhagwati, provided a national institutional mechanism for coordinating legal aid services. This led to the establishment of a statutory framework and a nationwide institutional mechanism.

While the expansion of these opportunities for conciliatory settlement of disputes was led by the Lok Adalats, this historical evolution provides an important aspiration of the justice system: a person's financial and social standing should not dictate whether his legal and constitutional rights are protected. Three decades later, that venerable aspiration demands a renewed sense of urgency.

As of mid-October 2026, over 5.8 crore cases are reportedly pending across Indian courts. This extraordinarily concerning data fails to capture the various livelihoods that have been wrecked; the relationships that have been ruined; and the remedies that ought to have been made available within a reasonable period of time, but never were. The reality is that this pendency data only demonstrates the number of people who have entered the system. There are many more who have simply abandoned or chosen not to pursue legitimate legal claims, having resigned themselves to the fact that seeking justice is unaffordable, inaccessible, or purely futile. It is in this context that legal services ought to be at the heart of legal reforms in India.

I believe there are five priorities that can translate this constitutional commitment into institutional transformation:

1. Need to establish a National Advisory Committee to address judicial delays:

The Chief Justice of India should constitute a national standing advisory committee on access to justice and judicial delays. This committee should be independent.

While working with the National Legal Services Authority and other existing state, central, and national-level institutions, the committee should have, besides lawyers and judges, representatives from:

• academia (scholars);

• court administrators;

• mediators and mediation practitioners;

• civil society; and

• the private sector (experts in artificial intelligence, technology, and organizational transformation)

The mandate of this committee should be deeply practical and change-oriented. It should identify obstacles that are continuously affecting our ability to address delays, design innovative and even radical solutions, and evaluate results that could make a difference. This should be supported by a permanent research secretariat with law students serving as interns and other research assistants.

The committee could work closely with the National Legal Service Authority to publish an annual reform agenda, distinct from the Authority's own report, while independently assessing the latter with a view to reimagining existing practices. The recommendations of this committee could be advisory in nature while respecting judicial independence and the constitutional responsibilities of courts and governments. This committee could provide institutional memory and continuity while ensuring that reforms are sustainable even when there are changes in institutional leadership.

2. Strengthening the Legal Services Authority to deliver legal aid:

The national ambition for providing access to justice to all citizens requires district-level capacity building. NALSA, state legal services authorities, and district legal services authorities require predictable and sustainable funding and adequate professional and legally trained staff: legal aid lawyers, law students as research assistants and interns, and even technology experts who will be directly working within the legal services authority to use, wherever appropriate, technological interventions to improve the efficiency of the legal aid mechanism. These institutions also require continuous training, capacity building, and a meaningful work ecosystem to deliver on the promise of addressing delays. We must also facilitate institutional reforms such that each beneficiary has a named contact who is able to provide information about the case, communicate about the developments in the case, and ultimately help secure the relief that has been sought.

We must create a legal aid services charter that establishes globally benchmarked standards for acknowledging requests, allocation of counsel, and even responding to grievances and complaints. The performance appraisal process associated with the staff working in the legal services authority should be based on the quality of the representation, feedback provided by the clients, and the nature of the relief that has been secured, alongside the total number of people who have been assisted. The fact is that legal assistance should begin early in the cycle of litigation. Individuals need help right at the beginning, for example, with a claim for wages, an application seeking pensionary benefits, or obtaining an order of maintenance.

All these elements of intervention can significantly reduce hardships from prolonged litigation. The legal aid services at present include advice and assistance with welfare entitlements. However, there is a stronger case for a greater degree of institutional investment that can address these preventive mechanisms in a much stronger and efficacious manner.

3. Reimagining the role of Mediation and making it accessible in every district:

One of the most under-supported and under-evolved aspects of dispute resolution mechanisms in India is the mediation pathway. There is a strong case for every district in India to develop and formulate an accessible mediation pathway, which is inextricably linked to legal aid offices, institutions that are working in the community, and the courts themselves. Mediators who are trained, with support from legal advisers, will be able to resolve contractual, familial, employment-related, and other legal disputes in the neighbourhood, before these disputes end up becoming harder to resolve and inevitably more litigious. Early warning signals must be identified and acted upon so that mediation can be deployed more effectively, even before a dispute reaches the stage of litigation.

There are many innovations that could be explored in this aspect. One could be having “local resolution days,” which could be created by remote participation where necessary. The credibility of this innovation would significantly depend on participation through voluntary means, the availability of committed and competent mediators, and the presence of informed consent. It needs to be mentioned that individuals who are witnessing significant power imbalances need to receive separate advice, which is independent in nature. There is a case for investing in protection and adjudication, which ought to be available where settlement is not feasible or is somewhat inappropriate. The quality of the settlement that is assessed should also seek answers to whether these agreements are fair and implemented. The actual figures of settlement on their own will not be able to tell whether a vulnerable individual has received justice. The reality is that Lok Adalats are premised on compromise, which at times may be compelled, while official guidelines expressly prohibit pressuring parties into reaching a settlement. All the more, we need to look at the impact of these settlements.

4. Technological impact to simplify access to justice:

The evolution of the e-Courts programme in India has created a strong foundation for widening digital access. The legal services authorities ought to build on this foundation through various facilities that will ultimately enable ordinary litigants to understand proceedings, help in preparing documents, and remain duly informed about the process to avoid repeated travel and, in that process, significant expenditure. There is a case for multilingual, voice-enabled legal assistance services and equally effective translation services—perhaps by deploying artificial intelligence—which could help litigants gain information about basic procedures, legal processes, and institutional mechanisms. They could help identify eligibility for legal aid and connect these users and potential litigants to competent professionals.

After obtaining the requisite approvals, a portable digital record of the case could be created to enable beneficiaries to move between legal offices without repeatedly submitting the same documents. The use of artificial intelligence could also help us in understanding missing papers, creating a better way of organizing records and identifying the procedural challenges for human review. Information that needs to be verified, protection of confidentiality, independent audits, and even accessible offline alternative mechanisms would be essential for technology to be successful. While technology should be used in every possible manner to improve efficiency, decisions that are impacting liberty, rights, or entitlement ought to remain with accountable human decision makers with proper judicial oversight.

Technology undoubtedly has the potential to reduce the effort required of ordinary litigants and enable judges, already pressed for time, to adjudicate disputes effectively and write judgements, rather than focusing on ancillary aspects.

5. Targeting the causes of delay while ensuring the remedies reach the citizens:

The symbiotic relationship between courts and legal services authorities should be strengthened. They should work together to address delays in this process. Unserved summons, unavailable and untraceable records, absent witnesses, frequent adjournments, or challenges of implementing orders require attention at the judicial level. The fact is that different obstacles need different types of interventions. We must develop a hearing-readiness service to help legal aid beneficiaries prepare for their hearings by gathering relevant documents, coordinating witnesses, and addressing procedural challenges in advance. This alone has the potential to support court administration without influencing the adjudicatory process. The district legal service authorities ought to be empowered to find disputes that are recurring and involve the same public institution. We must facilitate concerted administrative interventions or settlements that could, in one go, prevent hundreds of people from pursuing identical grievances, albeit in a separated manner.

Law schools could play a useful role whereby law students and faculty members could partner with legal aid service authorities to evaluate these interventions and help refine them. Legal aid should continue even after the judgment is given, as assistance is needed for enforcement. A successful order that does not result in the payment being made, protection being granted, or benefit being given will leave the citizen's problem unresolved. The National Legal Services Day should become an opportunity for us to evaluate our functioning and even help us scrutinize the effectiveness of these bodies. This is a case for accepting public accountability for our functioning.

The constitutional promise will be restored when those most vulnerable are no longer required to endure extraordinary hardship just to secure justice. Legal services and the strengthening of these mechanisms are indispensable to ensuring that constitutional citizenship is a lived experience of every citizen. On the 9th of November, then, we Indians have an opportunity to renew our commitment to institutions that listen, mechanisms and remedies that are available and accessible in a timely manner, and justice that remains within the grasp of those who need it most.

Three Parallels for India's Legal Aid Framework

India has provided global leadership in digital transformation, especially for democratizing access to various public services. Our experience with Aadhaar, Passport Seva, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has underscored that technology, with institutional reforms, can fundamentally transform public services that were once considered difficult to deliver efficiently and at a scale commensurate with our large population. Each of these initiatives provides a unique lesson for access to justice. Call it simplification of the identification process, redesigning of service delivery, and connecting the various institutions involved through shared public and private infrastructure. These unique examples should provide valuable lessons for the judiciary to pursue an institutional transformation that is in line with the challenges it faces.

Aadhaar

Infrastructural innovation that makes accessibility easier

The achievement of Aadhaar as a framework transcends the physical identity card. It established a unique, digitally verifiable identity that can be applied for access to various services.

In March 2026, the government reported approximately 134 crore live Aadhaar holders, with Aadhaar-based identification, verification, or compliance being used across more than 3,100 direct benefit transfer schemes and 360 public services. This is a stupendous achievement. Its significance lies in providing common infrastructure through which various institutions are able to create identity and facilitate accessibility at an unimaginable scale. India's justice system can learn an important lesson from this experience.

This use of technology should help reduce the repeated administrative burdens that are imposed on people who are seeking help or assistance through the legal process. A secure portable legal services record could empower an individual to seek justice through a legal aid office, a mediation center, or even a court, without constantly submitting the same basic information and documents.

This ought to be subject to lawful access controls and legal compliance. Authorized professionals should be allowed to retrieve relevant records, verify the past steps in the legal process, and continue the provision of assistance across various institutions. The proposal is provided for continuity of service with different forms of identification available—rather than making Aadhaar a compulsory gateway to justice. Privacy, consent and data protection, including compliance against digital exclusion, must become integral to the design of this framework.

Passport Seva

Integrating Public Authority with Professional Service Delivery Mechanisms

Passport Seva has demonstrated how technology can become transformative when it is also integrated with organizational redesign. Launched in May 2010, this initiative since its inception has created a public-private partnership with Tata Consultancy Services. The private partner, in this case, provided various supportive capacities, including technology, citizen interfaces, and call centers that will provide direct information to passport applicants. The Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, had clearly retained sovereign and security responsibilities and complete control over core information. This unique division of responsibilities between the public and private sectors provides an important model for improving efficiency in the delivery of public services while preserving the sanctity of public authority.

The expansion that this has seen through postal networks brought the passport seva services directly in touch with communities. By March 2026, 452 post office passport seva kendras were operational. These centers took cognizance of approximately 39.59 lakh applications, including various police clearance certificates, during the year 2025.

The various government-based assessments of the working of the passport seva have recognized significant reductions in travel distance, time, and various associated expenditures. This expansion of the passport seva reform was undertaken through collaboration between public institutions. There are clear lessons that the judiciary can draw from this experience. Independence of the judiciary is compatible with professionally managed support services that contribute towards improving the quality of legal services through proper supervision by the judiciary. Well-designed government partnerships could vastly improve document digitization, assistance in filing, coordination for appointments, translation services, technical support services, and even strengthening communications with litigants.

The legal service authorities could create justice centers for assistance with transparent service standards and due methods of accountability of the staff. The adjudicatory authority will remain with the judges while the citizens could receive reliable administrative support. There should be an effort to ensure that procurement standards, confidentiality mechanisms, preservation of judicial data, and compliance mechanisms are in place.

UPI

The need for coalescing institutions around citizens' aspirations

The UPI system has enabled the development of shared infrastructure, allowing different institutions and applications to function seamlessly within a cohesive ecosystem.

The National Payments Corporation of India has developed this interface and it has enabled instant transfers across the various participating bank accounts. In September 2026 alone, UPI processed approximately 2,407 crore transactions worth ₹29.37 lakh crore, with 756 banks involved in participating in these transactions. These are only transaction figures rather than actual counts of individual users but they tend to demonstrate the breathtakingly large scale that a common accessible framework can create for a large country like India. The significant achievement of the UPI interface is to enable sending and receiving digital payments that are pragmatic and accessible for ordinary people and small businesses. The natural lesson for our justice system is about interoperability.

Ordinary citizens should be able to transition between legal aid, mediation, and courts without getting stuck in disconnected systems or repeatedly being asked for the same information that was sought earlier. A unified common access to justice legal framework would link legal aid applications, legal referrals, filings, case updates, and assistance with the enforcement and implementation of court orders and directions. There is a case for developing different authorized providers who could ensure accessible interfaces in various Indian languages.

This will function in accordance with common standards so that information is transferred securely, subject to legal and regulatory compliance and relevant approvals. For example, a person seeking help from a village-assisted center should be able to monitor and receive updates to follow up on a request through successive stages. UPI's unique experience is grounded in demonstrating how institutional complexity can be managed behind a public interface through technological transformation. From digital initiatives to systemic institutional reforms.

The Way Forward

These three parallels do not suggest that judicial adjudication is equivalent to verifying identity or transferring money. The lessons that we ought to learn from these experiences are that demographic complexity and the world's largest population should not deter us from undertaking fundamental changes in public access. The e-courts initiatives in India have undoubtedly established important foundations. However, when measured against the ambition of a seamless pathway from seeking advice to garnering an effective remedy, technology-based integration remains rudimentary in our legal system.

The digitisation of documents and provision for remote hearings should move towards substantive changes in how various institutions work together, are able to pinpoint delays, and serve the citizens' needs. It is a fact that the use of technology in isolation will not overcome judicial vacancies or solve defective procedures, let alone provide effective litigation.

It is also the case that these reforms cannot deliver access at the scale India requires without fundamental technological intervention. The proposed National Advisory Committee should draw significantly on these three experiences to develop, test, analyze, evaluate, and expand a coordinated reform program of action. Our ambition, as we gear up to mark National Legal Services Day, should be to make effective justice accessible with much less delay, much less cost, and much less uncertainty for every individual who seeks to have it. Only then will India's constitutional promise, embodied in Article 39A of the Constitution, be revitalised.



Author is a Rhodes Scholar & Founding Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University and President, World University Leaders Forum. Views are personal.

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