IndianLegal-QA / README.md
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metadata
language:
  - en
  - hi
  - mr
license: apache-2.0
pretty_name: IndianLegal-QA
tags:
  - question-answering
  - legal
  - indian-law
  - nlp
  - multilingual
  - indian-constitution
  - ipc
  - crpc
  - customs
  - tariff
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: question_answers.csv

IndianLegal-QA

A question-and-answer dataset derived from Indian legal and government documents, covering the Constitution of India, the Indian Penal Code, criminal and civil procedural law, customs and tariff classifications, and numerous central and state acts. The dataset is suitable for building, fine-tuning, and evaluating retrieval and question-answering systems over Indian legal text.

This dataset is also hosted on GitHub at Sakib-Dalal/IndianLegal-QA.

Overview

Each record is a paired question and answer extracted from an Indian legal source document. The questions ask factual questions about provisions, definitions, classifications, and procedures found in the source material, and the answers provide the corresponding textual response. Records use a simple two-field schema (question, answer).

Statistics

Property Value
Number of pairs 120,640
Fields per record question, answer
Languages English, Hindi, Marathi
Multilingual pairs ~23,630 (Devanagari script)
Formats CSV, JSONL, plain text
License Apache-2.0

Data format

The dataset is provided as question_answers.csv (comma-separated pairs, one per row). The same content is also distributed on GitHub in question_answers.jsonl and question_answers.txt. Each example has two string fields:

Field Description
question The question about a legal provision
answer The corresponding answer

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("Sakib-Dalal/IndianLegal-QA")
print(ds["train"])
print(ds["train"][0])

For local use, the CSV can be read with pandas:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("question_answers.csv")

Domain coverage

The pairs draw from a wide range of Indian legal sources. Approximate coverage by topic:

Domain Indicative count
Acts (central & state) ~25,550
Sections of enactments ~13,916
Schedules ~2,155
Articles of the Constitution ~1,552
Constitutional provisions ~983
Customs & tariff headings ~550
Indian Penal Code (IPC) ~88
Criminal Procedure Code ~22

The dataset spans the Constitution of India, IPC and CrPC, customs and tariff classification headings, civil and criminal procedure, and a broad set of central and state acts. A number of records are provided in Hindi and Marathi, making the dataset useful for multilingual legal NLP.

Example

Q: What is described as the flexibility of the Constitution?
A: Its flexibility lies in its amendments.

License

This dataset is released under the Apache License 2.0.

Citation

@dataset{dalal2026indianlegalqa,
  title   = {IndianLegal-QA},
  author  = {Dalal, Sakib},
  year    = {2026},
  repo    = {https://github.com/Sakib-Dalal/IndianLegal-QA},
  url     = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Sakib-Dalal/IndianLegal-QA},
}