CRITICAL ANALYSIS: DIGITIZATION OF INDIAN COURTS

I INTRODUCTION –

1. India has emerged as a pioneer in digitization of its judicial systems such as its courts, tribunals. etc. As part of the e-governance plan, the e-courts mission was launched in 2007 in collaboration with the e-committee of the supreme court and the Department of Justice (DOJ). The e-courts mission was launched to fulfill 4 main goals – 1) To increase access to justice, 2) To enhance judicial productivity, transparency and processes, 3) To make Indian courts digitized, 4) To enhance judicial productivity qualitatively and quantitatively. Phase I and Phase II of the mission was completed till 2024 and the Phase III of the same is launched and approved by the cabinet with an allocation of Rs. 1500 Crores.

   
   

2. As of today, the High Courts and Supreme Court of India have completely adopted the digital infrastructure in various domains be it hybrid hearings, e- filing, viewing case status, maintaining digital court records, or court fee payment. The courts have also adopted Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at various places. For instance, the Apex court has adopted a software called Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (SUVAS). This is a machine assisted translation tool trained by AI that translates judicial documents into various vernacular languages. The Indian judiciary is currently examining the scope of using blockchain for storing and sharing of important judicial documents.

II Phases of E-courts mission

1. Phase 1 of the e-courts mission was implemented between 2011 and 2015. This being the pilot phase of revamping Indian judiciary, the primary focus was on setting a base for digitisation. The district and taluka court were equipped with computers, wires, LAN cables, and video conferencing facilities. A Case information Software (CIS) was also operationalised during this phase. A financial outlay of Rs. 935 crore was passed for completion of the Phase 

   
   

2. Under this phase 14,249 District and Subordinate courts were digitised. LAN cables were installed at 13,683 courts, hardware provided in 13,436 courts and software was installed in 13,672 courts. Laptops were provided to 14,309 judicial officers and change management exercise completed in all High Courts. Over 14,000 Judicial Officers were trained in the use of UBUNTU- Linux Operating System. More than 3900 court staff were trained in Case Information System (CIS) as System Administrators. Video Conferencing facility was operationalised between 493 court complexes & 347 corresponding jails. 

   
   

3. Phase 2 of the e-courts mission was implemented between 2015 and 2023 with a financial outlay of Rs. 1670 crores. The focus of Phase 2 was to undertake steps and initiatives to make access to justice easier and available for all through digitisation of various legal processes such as filing of cases and payment of court fee, etc. This in turn enhanced efficiency, effectiveness and transparency in judicial processes. Phase 2 of this mission also witnessed a worldwide pandemic i.e. Covid 19 which accelerated the digitisation.

   
   

4. By end of this phase, nearly 95% of Indian courts had achieved close to 100Mbps of bandwidth speed. A National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) was introduced which is an online database of all orders, judgements, and cases across all courts, tribunals, appellate. The Phase-II of the project has put great emphasis on service delivery to the litigants, lawyers and other stakeholders for which 7 platforms also have been created that provide real time case update to litigants through SMS Push and Pull (2,00,000 SMS sent daily), Email (2,50,000 sent daily), multilingual and tactile courts services Portal (35 lakh hits daily), JSC (Judicial Service centres) and Info Kiosks. The Indian courts have heard more than 3 crore cases on Video Conferencing up until 2023.

   
   

5. Phase 3 of the e-courts mission has already been approved by the cabinet for 2023-2027 with a total financial outlay of Rs. 7210 Crores. The main objective of Phase 3 is to make a unified technological platform for the entire judiciary which will make interactions between litigants and courts paperless, digital and online. It will also focus on digitising the legacy records and pending cases on an indigenously developed e-sewakendra. Paperless Courts will bring court proceedings under a digital format leading to transparency and accountability in the Indian Judiciary and it will also lead to speedy disposal of cases. Video Conferencing (VC) facilities are to expanded beyond the scope of traffic challans. In conclusion, Phase III of the e-courts mission will revolutionise the way judiciary works in India.

III. Resources under the e-courts mission 

1. National Judicial Data Grid -

a. The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) is a substantive project developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). NJDG is a database of all date relating to 1) orders, decrees, decisions, judgements of pending and decided cases, appeals, petition, etc ; 2) number of cases instituted across all courts, appellate, tribunals, etc ; 3) pendency and disposal of cases ; 4) status and breakup of cases in 4 main categories namely criminal, civil, pre-trial, total cases ; 5) breakup on the basis of party i.e. women, elderly, etc. and 6) data on the age of cases pending. An electronic board that displays the same information as NJDG is also placed at the entrance of every High Court. This is knows as the justice clock.

b. NJDG Platform was launched in the year 2015 by Justice Madan B. Lokar (Supreme Court of India) which allows administrative judges to monitor, manage, identify the current status of Indian courts. It also allows for further planning to reduce pendency in courts and effective management of courts and cases. It automatically updates itself every day since it is connected to the Case Information System (CIS). NJDG is empowered to publish reports on types of cases, number of pending cases, number of judgements given in a day, number of adjournments given in day, number of cases where judgements were reserved, state wise breakup of cases, judge wise breakup of cases, etc. NJDG has wide applications such as court management, case management, policy planning and digital scrutiny.

2. Case Information System

c. The Case Information (CIS) was developed under the Phase 1 of the e-courts mission that allows citizens to view the current status of pending cases. CIS is bases on a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) which was developed indigenously by NIC. FOSS implies that content made under this is free for use without any copyright restrictions. Currently CIS National Core Version 3.2 is being implemented in District Courts and the CIS National Core Version 1.0 is being implemented for the High Courts.

3. Real time information providers

d. As of today there are 7 softwares being used by Indian courts to communicate listing, case number, room number and the court to the lawyer/litigant. It works on Push and Pull system which sends these updates through SMS, email, WhatsApp. These updates provide transparency between the courts, lawyers and the clients. It acts as a automatic information kiosk that provides real time update to the recipient. As of today 2,00,000 SMSs are sent out daily, 2,50,000 emails are sent daily, 35,00,000 hits daily on info kiosks and e-courts app. These SMSs not only inform the listing of a matter but inform of successful filing or payment of court fees.

4. E-filing

e. Before the advent of e-courts mission, filing in cases was done through offline mode. There were specific places/offices where lawyers and para-legals would line up in long queues to submit the files that were to be put on record. But now the same is done from the comfort of our offices or homes. The e-filing portal has reduced the filing time from 1 hour to just a matter of 3 to 4 minutes. It allows for filing of all legal documents such as Vakalatnama, eSigning, online video recording of oath, filing of multiple IAs, misc. applications, petition, revisions, quashing, etc. E-filing portal is also equipped with the Delhi High Court rules and regulations which allows the litigants to view common objections if any within 24 hours. Currently the courts are using e-filing 3.0 and all high courts of the country have adopted the draft rules for e-filing.

5. E-court pay

f. Court fees is the fee which is to be deposited to the court before the beginning of the proceedings and at the time of filing of the suit. Today, the E-court fee portal is launched that allows for payment of court fees, fines penalties digitally. With a dedicated payment portal it generates a number that is associated with the plaint at the time of filing of suit. The e-court fee payment has been adopted by 20 High Courts already.

6. National Service and Tracking of Electronic Processes (NSTEP)

g. National Service and Tracking of Electronic Processes (NSTEP) has been launched for technology enabled process serving and issuing of summons. A GPS enabled device is introduced and is handed over to the Bailiff for service of summons. This will lead to greater transparency and speedy delivery of processes. It will also provide real time update of service of summons while tracking of geographical coordinates of the process server at the time of serving.

7. Secure, Scalable & Sugamya Website as a Service (S3WAAS) Website

h. As part of the Digital India campaign, S3WAAS allows for making government websites based on safe and secure cloud network and pre-set templates. The e-courts website is based on this S3WAAS platform. It allows for conversion of the website into local and regional languages. It also includes assistive tech facilities for divyang users. All other court websites are being upgraded from the existing system to the S3WAAS platform which are secure, scalable and accessible.

8. IEC and Training

i. As part of the Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign, the e-courts committee has been taking initiatives to educate lawyers, judicial officers and public related to the technological advancements in the courts. As of today these initiatives have been conducted covering nearly 3,60,993 stakeholders including Judges, Courts staff, Advocates and judicial officers. 25 Master Trainers have been trained in each High Court who in turn have already trained 5409 Master Trainers across the country. These master trainers have in turn taught e-filing and using of e-court services to thousands of lawyers and across the country. E-committee of the Supreme Court is also regularly conducting webinars for the same and has been uploading the same on their YT channels and websites.

9. Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (SUVAS)

j. SUVAS is a machine assisted translation tool trained by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that allows for inclusion of regional languages in judicial processes. In the year 2023, Supreme Court began to translate its older judgements, orders and documents into regional languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, telegu, etc. SUVAS has already translated over 22000 judgements in Hindi, over 3500 in Punjabi, over 1000 in Gujarati and over 1800 in Kannada. By the end of 2023, SUVAS had already translated 31,000 rulings in regional languages. Though these rulings carry a disclaimer at the start that relieves SC of all mistakes in it.

k. While developing the SUVAS software, SC encountered a problem which was lack of unified vocabulary for legal jargons in regional languages which led to wide inaccuracies in the translation process. Pertaining to this the Bar Council of India has started work on developing a legal vocabulary.

10. Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court’s Efficiency (SUPACE)

l. SUPACE, developed by the e-committee of the Supreme court, is an AI enabled assistive tool that aims to enhance the efficiency of Indian courts using artificial Intelligence. It is powered to help judges and researchers to work on cases by extracting relevant information, finding judgements, reading case files and drafting court documents. The entire software trains itself by learning patterns every time a prompt or action is made, thereby becoming smarter and more specific.

m. SUPACE allows judges and researchers to convert text files into PDF files then the chatbot can be used to ask questions from the text such as which para talks about the law, etc. The fact extraction system highlights relevant facts or the judgements quoted or submissions made. An integrated word processor allows for making notes or drafting legal documents and finally a dashboard is present that shows number of cases worked upon, number of tasks to be done by a team or an individual.

IV. Critical Analysis – Disadvantages 

1. Infrastructure

a. The e-courts mission called for development of digital infrastructure in Indian courts in order to update the Indian judicial landscape, however this is fulfilled only to the extent of High courts and the Supreme Court.

1.1 E-filing

b. The e-filing system which was developed in order to make the lengthy offline filing process into a digital process and under the phase II of the e-courts mission, the same was developed. However, the major problem with the e-filing system is the different Graphic User Interface and portals for the apex court, high court and district courts. Not only that the portal made for district courts have had complaint for long lags and unavailable websites.

c. Though the purpose of the e-filing system is same but still the developers felt the need of developing different portals rather than just giving the litigant the option to file under different courts in the same website. Today more than 85% of pending cases in India are pending in the district courts thereby more focus and resources should be focused there in order to reduce the total pendency in India

1.2 Virtual Court ProceedingsWith the highest pending case dockets, the district courts require the best Virtual Conferencing Systems, however that is not the case. In 2021, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed to address the gaps in VC hearings in district courts.

a. On Ground – On Ground, there are no microphones for either sides of lawyers who want to make submissions and there is absence of screens that allow for one side of lawyer to view the other in case only one side appears offline.

b. When an application or a document is filed by either side, common objections are to be cleared before it is put in the pipeline for listing. Now these objections are checked by an automated software which has the Delhi High Court rules and regulations fed. But with that present, there is also a feature that allows the dealing to put more objections in it.So when a court’s docket is full, it is a common practice for the dealings to put more objections in the documents in order to postpone the matter to the next day.

2. Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Security 2.1 Electronic Evidence

2.1 Electronic Evidence

a. The importance of Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Security in Indian courts has grew more with the introduction of the new criminal laws BNS, BNSS, BSA replacing IPC, CRPC and IEA. The new evidence act has drastically increased the credibility of electronic evidence by allowing it to be considered as primary evidence.

b. However, there is no security measure in place to safeguard its collection, storing, and disposition of evidence that is present in the electronic form. There are also no provisions or measures taken to check the credibility of evidence presented in court like checks for plagiarism, etc.

2.2 Cyberattacks

c. First Instance : On 20th of September 2024, the official YouTube channel of the Supreme Court of India was hacked and used illegally for promotion of a crypto currency. The official channel of the apex court of India is widely used by the court to live stream cases being heard by the constitutional bench and matters in the interest of public or society. The channel was hacked and used to live stream promotion of crypto currency developed by a Ripple labs. The stream was titled ‘Brad Garlinghouse.’

1. Second Instance : On 29th of October 2024, Calcutta high court’s YouTube channel was also hacked while it was live streaming a case. After the hacking, an obscene video was played.

   
   

2. Third Instance : On 19th July 2024, a Rohini district court judge’s messenger app was hacked for 6 hours and the identity of the judge was used to dupe his friends for close to Rs. 1 lakh.

   
   

3. From these instances, it is crystal clear that there is no security measure in place that safeguards court’s official resources. Currently, the court’s website is linked with the data of the cases filed in court and various details of people contesting cases. This poses a straight risk to the privacy of the citizens.

3. Access and Comfort in the digital justice delivery process

a. Since the introduction of e-filing, there are over one fifty million cases have been filed in Indian courts but just 36000 cases were filed using the e- filing portal. The is a rate of 0.00024% cases filed through e-filing portal. There are 2 underlying reasons for this percentage i.e. Access and comfort.

3.1 Access

b. As per the data of Statista, India today has the largest offline population that is 650 million people. Fortunately there would be no lawyer in India who would not have access to internet. So while the internet access is being solved at a more central level, people should be encouraged to engage lawyers who are comfortable in using the court’s resources which allows faster justice.

3.2 Comfort

c. For the e-courts mission to succeed it is also very important for litigants and lawyers to be comfortable with the digitised way of court operations. However most of the lawyers are still not comfortable with using e-court portals.

d. On Ground : More than 80% of lawyers and paralegals still line up for hours in the long lines of filing and court fee payment. Not only lawyers but most of the designated senior lawyers and their offices still operate in the conventional manner.

4. Maintaining electronic records

a. Since the advent of the e-courts mission, courts across India have made an effort to go paperless. Now to achieve this goal of going paperless we have to address the issues involved in it.

4.1 Technological issues faced by lawyers and the courts

b. Whenever a case is going on, the lawyer or the law office maintains an electronic file. The electronic file is constantly being updated since new applications being filed are added or new orders are being added. Now during proceedings, there are lot of instances where the file goes corrupt which creates a lot of ruckus.

c. The court files being used are generally of very large size like 2-3 GB which is very hard to share, store and edit. Since lawyers have to constantly edit, merge and insert new documents in PDFs, lawyers also have to buy expensive pdf editing software and cloud storage which in turn has increased the cost of litigation.

d. To give context, the High court of Delhi has prescribed that every file that has to be put on record must be less than 100 MB through online filing and 1 GB through a pen drive which is to be submitted to the offline for which lawyers have to reduce the quality of the documents.

4.2 How the court maintains E-record

e. The court has developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handling files. Whenever something is filed in the High Court, the court divides the file into 4 to 6 volumes namely Vakalatnama, plaint, applications and pleadings depending on the size of the pleadings.

f. The court then makes a master index which has all 4/6 volumes mentioned. Then a subordinate index is present in all the volumes. Paging of every volume is done from 01 which is put in black at either top right or in the centre. This is done because PDFs use a running page number i.e it also pages the tittle page.

g. During the proceedings, the court, plaintiff and defendant each maintains a copy of the court file. There are instances where the court and the lawyer’s file have to be synced together. So the lawyer applies for a certified copy till date which allows syncing of files.

4.3 Preserving records

h. After a case is decided, the file is ordered to be sent to the record room. The file then is stored in a drive and kept in the record room. Before the e- courts, hard files were everyday brought and sent back to the record room for hearings.

i. District court today still have trolleys in court that move files for everyday matters from record rooms to court rooms. The High courts have established Judicial Digital Repository or Digital record rooms which store scanned copies of files on a cloud based server.

V. Critical Analysis - Advantages 

1. Increased Transparency

a. Before introduction of the e-courts plan, the only way the client/litigant could be informed about the court and its proceedings was through their lawyers. However, the introduction of this mission has changed that. Today a person contesting a case does not have to rely on his/her lawyer to know the next date or get the recent order, etc. The e-courts mission has established complete transparency in the judicial process.

b. For Instance, Earlier if a lawyer did not show up in a matter would say to his client that the judge was on leave or the court was on strike, but now since the orders and case status comes on a click of button to the client, the lawyer cannot lie and the client knows if his lawyer appeared.

c. The e-committee has taken all necessary measures to keep the litigant informed and updated about his matters. The litigant gets real time information through numerous ways including WhatsApp, SMS and mail, about the next date or time or purpose fixed for next date. Not only that litigant also has access to see the all the orders, case history, case status, information about the court by logging on his court’s e-portal.

d. To top this the courts have also begun video conferencing of all matters and have courts hybrid. The daily cause list published by courts includes Video Conferencing link that can be used by litigants to view their matters live and be informed. Apart from that the apex court has also made it a norm to live stream constitutional bench cases, cases of public interest and or cases taken by court suo moto which not has not only increased transparency between litigant and court but also between citizens and the judiciary.

2. Reduced Time and Cost of Litigation

e. The e-courts plan has introduced measures which are drastically saving time in court procedures which in turn have reduced the time of disposal of a case. Now the average duration of the case depends on various factors such as type of case, forum involved or number of appeals in the matter but there is one metric thorugh which the success of e-courts mission can be determined i.e. CCR or Case Clearance Rate. The Case Clearance rate is the percentage of cases disposed in a year to number of cases filed in a year.

f. According to the India Justice Report 2022, the court clearance rate of high court has increased from 88.5% to 94.6% from 2018-19 to 2022. As per the report the high court of Kerela and Orrisa have the highest clearance rate of 156% and 131% respectively. This means that Kerela and Orrisa disposing more cases than filed are also reducing their backlog/pendency.

g. This happened due to the measures taken under the e-courts mission. The best example of this is the e-filing portal which allowed lawyers to skip long queues, hectic travelling, excertion to physical filing centres and file from the comfort of their offices. Another advantage of the e-filing system is that it works 24/7 so filing can be done anytime as opposed to earlier system which would delay the process since the courts and filing centres would be closed on all Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

h. Second Instance of the same is of the complete Inbox portal on the high court’s website which allows to see the case history of both sides. Now this means that whenever the other side files an application in the court, we know the same is filed and can be prepared for it. Before the introduction of complete inbox, one hearing would be wasted where the other side would inform the court and us that such and such application is filed and then due course would be followed.

3. Procedural benefits - A lot of procedural benefits have come since the introduction of e-courts where things like file inspection, application for certified copies is done through online mode. The e-courts plan has also introduced an automatic system of sending court summons through NSTEP. Litigants now participate in court proceedings and put pressure on lawyers to act. The complete inbox also allows to view court documents filed by either side of the parties which saves time and helps in faster disposal of cases. Procedural activities like service of lawsuit or initiation of proceedings, accepting case files for settlement, etc are now being automated.

4. Level playing field established in Litigation – Since the advent of digitisation in Indian courts, there is a level playing field established in the Indian legal space. Systems are now being standardised across all courts in the country. It has allowed equal access and inclusion in the judicial system.

VI Conclusion

The digitisation of courts in India is undoubtedly redefining the judicial landscape of India and improving judicial accessibility in India. The e-courts mission has ensured greater transparency, efficiency and faster justice. India is perhaps one of the very first few countries who are leading hybrid courts and making significant efforts towards digitisation of the justice delivery system. Nonetheless, the digitisation process is accompanied by a mirage of privacy, security and technological concerns which have to be addressed before reaching the stage of complete electronic courts.