Does Political Alignment Deliver Justice? SC Rape Reporting, Conviction, and Trial Pendency Under Partisan Alignment in India, 2001–2022

<title>Abstract</title> <p>India records over 6,800 rape cases with Scheduled Caste (SC) victims annually, but conviction rates remain below 35% and trial pendency exceeds 85%. This paper asks whether partisan alignment between state and central governments—the ruling party match that drives general fiscal transfers—also improves SC justice delivery: more reporting, higher conviction rates, lower pendency, and faster trial disposal. Using a state-year panel of 20 major Indian states over 2001–2022 (N = 427), we find consistent alignment premiums across all four justice outcomes. Aligned states show higher SC rape registration rates (+4.2% TWFE, p &lt; 0.01), higher conviction rates (+1.0 pp, p &lt; 0.01), lower pendency (−1.1 pp, p &lt; 0.001), and faster disposal times (−0.29 years, p &lt; 0.001). BJP–INC heterogeneity reveals a sharp divergence in the reporting channel: BJP-aligned states show substantially higher reporting (+7.4% TWFE, p &lt; 0.01) while INC-aligned states show none (+0.5%, p = 0.82). Conviction and pendency premiums are similar across both party families. We interpret the BJP-reporting premium as consistent with both increased FIR registration pressure under BJP state governments (which may reflect electoral signalling on law-and-order) and possibleunder-reporting suppression in INC-governed states with stronger dominant-caste political networks. Wild cluster bootstrap (WCB, G = 20, B = 999) confirms the pendency result (WCB 95% CI [−1.43,−0.97]) but cannot reject zero for reporting and conviction with only 20 clusters. Results are robust to year fixed effects and state fixed effects separately. JEL: J15, K42, D72, H77, O15.</p>