In 1998, The New York Times cited studies showing that more than one-third of state legislators in Uttar Pradesh, India s most populous state, had criminal records. The London-based Financial Times cited Indian press allegations that it took three kidnappings to pay for a poll campaign in Uttar Pradesh. In 1997, the Election Commission estimated that 40 members of parliament and 700 state assembly representatives nationwide faced charges for, or had been convicted of, offenses ranging from extortion to murder. The constitution allows the central government to dissolve state governments following a breakdown in normal administration. Successive governments in New Delhi have misused this power to gain control of states under opposition administration, although in recent years there have been fewer federal takeovers.
Economic reforms continue to devolve power to the states.
The judiciary is independent and in recent years has exercised unprecedented activism in response to public interest litigation over official corruption, environmental issues, and other matters. However, the system has a backlog of more than 30 million cases, is widely considered to be subject to corruption and manipulation at the lower levels, and is largely inaccessible to the poor. Police, army, and paramilitary forces continued to be implicated in cases of disappearances, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, arbitrary detention, and destruction of homes, particularly in Kashmir, and in Assam and other northeastern states. Police routinely torture suspects to extract confessions and abuse ordinary prisoners, particularly low-caste members. Rape of female convicts remains a problem.