By R. Suryamurthy
Every major scandal in India now follows an almost ritualistic sequence. A tragedy unfolds. Public outrage erupts. Television studios demand accountability. Governments promise “strict action.” Investigative agencies conduct high-profile arrests. And then comes the political guarantee that has become New Delhi’s preferred antidote to public anger: the guilty will be tried in fast-track courts.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance that those responsible for the NEET examination paper leak would face speedy prosecution through fast-track courts fits perfectly into this familiar script. It is politically reassuring, emotionally satisfying and administratively convenient. It signals decisiveness at a moment when millions of students feel betrayed by a system that promised meritocracy but delivered manipulation.
Yet the government’s own data reveal a disturbing contradiction. India’s fast-track courts are themselves slowing down.
The promise of speedy justice is today being made through institutions that increasingly resemble the conventional judicial system they were designed to replace—overburdened, understaffed, uneven in performance and steadily accumulating backlogs. If the NEET controversy has exposed the industrialisation of examination fraud, Parliament’s latest disclosures expose something equally troubling: the institutional limits of India’s capacity to deliver the swift justice that politicians continue to promise.
The irony could hardly be more profound. The Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) were never conceived as a universal solution to every national scandal. Their origins lie in one of India’s darkest moments. Following the nationwide outrage after the 2012 Delhi gang rape, successive governments acknowledged that delayed justice in crimes against women and children had become a national embarrassment. The result was the centrally sponsored Fast Track Special Courts Scheme, launched in October 2019, dedicated exclusively to the expeditious trial of rape and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) cases. The scheme has since been extended twice and currently remains operational until September 30, 2026.
Its objective was straightforward: create a parallel judicial mechanism capable of delivering justice faster than ordinary criminal courts. Seven years later, that objective itself appears increasingly elusive.
According to the Ministry of Law and Justice, India has 775 operational Fast Track Special Courts, including 398 exclusive POCSO courts, against a sanctioned strength of 790 courts spread across 29 States and Union Territories. Every court is staffed with a single judicial officer and seven support personnel under the centrally sponsored funding model.
On paper, the rollout appears impressive. In practice, the system is carrying a staggering 249,209 pending cases as of April 30, 2026. Of these, 107,368 cases remain pending before combined FTSCs while 141,841 cases are awaiting disposal before exclusive POCSO courts.
These are not merely statistics. They represent victims waiting for justice, witnesses waiting to testify, families waiting for closure and accused persons waiting for verdicts. Every pending file is a reminder that a fast-track court can only move as quickly as the institutional ecosystem supporting it.
The geographical distribution of pendency reveals an even deeper structural imbalance. Uttar Pradesh, despite operating 218 Fast Track Special Courts—more than one-fourth of the country’s entire network—continues to have 96,549 pending cases, nearly 39 percent of the national backlog. Maharashtra has 38,474 pending cases, Bihar 23,930, Madhya Pradesh 10,648, Telangana 8,908, Odisha 8,849, Tamil Nadu 8,832, Kerala 6,408, Karnataka 5,316 and Gujarat 4,857.
If this is the condition of courts specifically created to expedite justice, what exactly makes policymakers believe they can seamlessly absorb another complex category of criminal litigation arising from organised examination fraud? The answer, perhaps, lies less in judicial planning than political communication.
For governments confronting public outrage, “fast-track” has become less a judicial category than a political vocabulary. It conveys urgency without necessarily creating capacity. The trend in case disposal illustrates the problem with brutal clarity.
In 2023, Fast Track Special Courts registered 81,471 new cases while disposing of 76,319. In 2024, registrations increased to 88,902, with disposals rising modestly to 85,595. The system appeared to be coping. Then the equilibrium collapsed.
During 2025, fresh registrations surged dramatically to 143,936, while disposals fell sharply to 66,500, causing pending cases to balloon from 204,122 to 245,579 within a single year. That single statistic should fundamentally reshape the national conversation.
It demonstrates that judicial capacity has limits. Once incoming cases outpace disposals, even specialised courts cease to be fast. Speed is not a legal notification issued by a ministry. It is an institutional outcome produced by adequate judges, prosecutors, investigators, forensic laboratories, court staff, digital infrastructure and efficient case management.
India continues to confuse the announcement of reform with reform itself. The NEET protests expose precisely why this distinction matters. For millions of students, the paper leak controversy is not simply another corruption scandal. It is an assault on the principle of equal opportunity. Competitive examinations represent perhaps the last remaining arena where millions of ordinary families believe talent can overcome privilege. When organised criminal syndicates infiltrate that system, they do not merely steal question papers—they privatise merit itself.
The consequences extend far beyond one examination. India has witnessed repeated leaks involving recruitment examinations, teacher eligibility tests, police recruitment, engineering entrance examinations, nursing admissions and now medical admissions. What once appeared to be isolated incidents has evolved into a sophisticated underground economy involving digital communication networks, interstate operators, proxy candidates, forged identities, encrypted messaging platforms and financial transactions running into crores of rupees.
This is no longer examination malpractice. It is organised crime directed against the Republic’s promise of social mobility. Yet India’s response remains largely episodic. Each scandal produces arrests, committee reports, political statements and promises of exemplary punishment. Rarely does it produce structural reform.
The contradiction becomes even sharper when viewed through the performance of the Fast Track Special Courts themselves. Conviction rates differ dramatically across the country. In 2025, Nagaland recorded an average conviction rate of 80 percent, Manipur 64.7 percent, Tamil Nadu 31.35 percent and Uttar Pradesh 25.22 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, Andhra Pradesh recorded 5.55 percent, Karnataka 7.04 percent, Odisha 8.43 percent, Gujarat 9.34 percent, Bihar 9.65 percent and Delhi 10.92 percent.
Such extraordinary variation cannot be explained merely by differences in criminal behaviour. It reflects disparities in investigation quality, prosecutorial preparedness, judicial workload, witness management, forensic capacity and administrative efficiency. In other words, justice in India remains profoundly unequal depending on where a crime occurs.
The Union government has undoubtedly invested significant resources in the scheme. Parliament was informed that Rs 1,259.51 crore has been released since the inception of the FTSC programme, while Rs 4,519.47 crore has been allocated under the Fifteenth Finance Commission for strengthening judicial infrastructure, including court halls, residential units, lawyers’ halls, digital computer rooms and related facilities.
Those investments are necessary. They are also insufficient. Infrastructure alone cannot compensate for chronic judicial vacancies. Parliament itself acknowledges that recruitment of judges remains the responsibility of State governments and High Courts, while development of subordinate court infrastructure primarily rests with the States. The Centre can finance; it cannot appoint.
This constitutional division of responsibility has created one of India’s enduring governance dilemmas: political accountability is national, administrative responsibility is federal and judicial outcomes depend on both. That is precisely why the NEET crisis demands more than another fast-track promise.
If examination fraud is to be treated as an offence threatening national security, economic integrity and constitutional equality—as many now argue—India requires a specialised institutional architecture rather than rhetorical acceleration. Dedicated examination fraud legislation, specialised prosecutors, digital forensic units, cyber investigators, financial intelligence integration, exclusive courts and statutory timelines would represent genuine reform.
Simply diverting these cases into an already overburdened fast-track ecosystem risks producing the opposite outcome. The victims of delayed justice would multiply rather than diminish. The deeper lesson extends beyond NEET.
Modern India has developed a troubling tendency to respond to every governance failure by creating a special mechanism rather than repairing the ordinary institutions that failed in the first place. Special courts substitute for judicial reform. Special investigation teams substitute for police reform. Special laws substitute for administrative accountability. Temporary fixes gradually become permanent governance.
The result is a fragmented justice system where every new crisis demands another exceptional institution because the ordinary one remains dysfunctional. The students protesting across India are not merely demanding punishment for those who leaked question papers.
They are asking whether the Republic still possesses the institutional credibility to protect merit. That question cannot be answered through another political assurance. It can only be answered when justice becomes predictably swift rather than selectively expedited; when courts become efficient because institutions function, not because governments announce another special category; and when “fast-track” ceases to be a slogan deployed after every national scandal and becomes an ordinary characteristic of India’s judicial system.
Until then, every promise of fast-track justice will remain vulnerable to the same uncomfortable question confronting the NEET generation today: If India’s fast-track courts are themselves no longer fast, who will fast-track the fast-track system? (IPA Service)
