JJ Act “Largely On Paper” After 10 Years, Says Justice BV Nagarathna; Flags 55% Pendency Before Juvenile Justice Boards

“The challenge lies in its implementation, and after 10 years, we are now here with enough experience to confront the difficult questions," Justice Nagarathna said.

Justice Nagarathna was opening the National Annual Stakeholders Consultation on “10 years of the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Children Act, 2015: Progress, Challenges and Priorities for the Next Decade”. The Juvenile Justice Committee of the Supreme Court convened the two-day consultation with UNICEF, under the guidance of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.

She began with Rabindranath Tagore’s line, “Every child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged of man”, and said that juvenile justice law “at its core must reflect that belief by insisting that the law leaves open the possibility of growth, change and reintegration.”

She also spoke of what adults owe to children. “We cannot be dismissive of their concerns, lest they feel alienated, dejected and rejected. The true measure of a society and its elders lies in how they deal with children,” she said, adding, “All children are ours, and their distress is our distress too.”

Justice Nagarathna said that whether a child in conflict with law should be treated as an adult remained the most difficult question the Act raises, “The question of treating a child in conflict with law as an adult represents one of the most delicate fault lines in our criminal justice system. It is a question where anxiety about crime confronts constitutional commitments to childhood, where public outrage meets legislative restraint and where the impulse of punishment competes with the philosophy of reform.”

She noted that the 2015 Act was passed during a period of intense public debate over serious offences committed by adolescents. Even so, she said, like the 2000 Act it kept rehabilitation, social integration, family-based care and the best interest of the child as its central objectives.

She identified Section 3 as the provision that holds the statute together. It sets out the principles that govern administration of the Act, including the presumption of innocence, the best interest of the child, privacy and confidentiality, and restoration and repatriation.

JJB Is “Not Meant to Be a Miniature Criminal Court”; Section 15 Assessments Need Caution

Explaining the separate roles of the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) and the Child Welfare Committee, Justice Nagarathna said, “The board is not meant to be a miniature criminal court. Its role is anchored in a different philosophy altogether, one which recognizes that children possess capacities for development and change and that the response of the justice system must take that developmental reality seriously.”

On the preliminary assessment under Section 15, she said: “The question we must confront is whether the process Section 15 creates is being undertaken with the caution, expertise and sensitivity that the statute demands.”

Section 15 governs the Board’s assessment of children aged sixteen and above who are alleged to have committed heinous offences.

On children in need of care and protection, she said the Act’s idea of care is centred on the family. “Care is not synonymous with institutionalization. The preferred objective wherever consistent with a child’s best interest is family-based care and restoration,” she said. Justice Nagarathna described adoption under Chapter VIII as part of the statute’s commitment to securing a child’s right to a family.

Justice Nagarathna then set out a series of questions for the consultation: “Are JJBs functioning with their full complement? Are child welfare committees adequately supported? Is legal aid meaningful rather than formal? Are social investigation reports timely and methodical? Are individual care plans actually individual? Is preliminary assessment under Section 15 consistent across jurisdictions?”

She also asked whether children with disabilities could access the system on an equal basis, and whether foster care and adoption were “functioning with required urgency” in cases where restoration was not possible.

Pendency Before JJBs: “A Disposed Case Is Not Necessarily a Rehabilitated Child”

She cited the India Justice Report of November 2025. On data for the year ending October 2023, it found that 55% of cases before Juvenile Justice Boards in 18 states and two Union Territories were pending. More than 55,000 children were awaiting decisions, while 45,000 cases had been disposed of. The same study found that 24% of the boards that responded (111 of 474) were functioning without a full bench of a principal magistrate and two social worker members.

“But pendency is only one factor. We must also ask what happens during the pendency,” she said. She asked whether children received education, counselling, legal assistance and medical care during that time, and what became of them once proceedings ended. “After all, a disposed case is not necessarily a rehabilitated child.”

She said the longitudinal data placed before this year’s consultation, together with inputs from the High Court Juvenile Justice Committees, would for the first time make it possible to track change over time and to identify practices that could be adopted elsewhere.

No Single Institution Can Implement the JJ Act

Justice Nagarathna said coordination was essential. “No single institution can implement the JJ Act. The board cannot do it alone. The Child Welfare Committee cannot do it alone,” she said, and listed the judiciary, police, executive, legal services institutions, probation workers, civil society and families.

“The system works only when these parts work together. The next decade must therefore be about strengthening not merely individual institutions, but the connections between them," she said.

A Law About the Future: “The Law Must Not Break the Child”

“The JJ Act is ultimately a law about the future. When the state intervenes in the life of a child, it is in a very real sense intervening in the future of the child,” she said. Those in the justice and child-protection systems, she said, had to see the child “not as a file … or a statistic, but as a person whose circumstances demand an individual response.”

“When a child breaks the law, the law must not break the child,” she said. Justice Nagarathna added that the background that led a child to offend had to be examined before any process was taken forward.

Child Justice Decisions Must Be “Fair, Reasoned and Resilient to Scrutiny”

For the next decade, she called for better data, stronger institutions, greater accountability, more effective protection services and adjudication that is “timely as well as child-sensitive”. She said the task before scholars, practitioners, judges and policymakers was “not merely to interpret the statute” but to protect its animating values. She also said difficult decisions must be reached through a process that is “fair, reasoned and resilient to scrutiny”.

“Let these 10 years be a moment for reflection and where required a point of departure,” she said.

She concluded while placing on record her appreciation of the work of the High Court Juvenile Justice Committees and the state and Union Territory Departments of Women and Child Development. The results of that work will be discussed over the two days, and she expressed the hope that the consultation would produce “concrete takeaways” so that best practices could be implemented across the states and Union Territories.