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},
}