Filing a Lawsuit in District Courts will be made Online across the Country

Filing a Lawsuit in District Courts will be made Online across the Country 

The Government is on the process of making almost everything online where it always has a record of it in a database sector. Filing cases and paying penalty has been made online in various states like Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, they are initially working on to bring it across the country for easy access to the District Courts through online. In less period of time, the e-Courts will be available across the country in an efficient way with its merits and it would gradually make an impact.

The initiatives for E-courts was made in the year 2005 by the E-committee under the ‘National E-governance Projects’ and came up with the ‘Phase I’ and ‘Phase II’ of the ‘E-courts Mission Mode Project’ in enhancing the ICT. The main objective of this is to transform the Judiciary by ICT enablement courts to make Justice Delivery procedure inexpensive.

E-Courts Mission Mode Project

The Government approved for the ICT enablement for 14,249 Districts and Subordinate courts under the ‘Phase I’ of the Project by March 2014 with the budget of Rs. 9.35 billion. As of the report on 30th November 2015 more than 93% of the activities have been completed in ‘Phase I’. 

While the ‘Phase II’ of the project has been initiated by theE-committee in January 2014. It is to further enhance the ICT enablement of Courts in wider objectives, where it includes of computerizing more than 8000 new courts with more strengthened hardware and connecting all courts in the country to the National Judicial Data Grid(NJDG) while keeping a track on to the status of cases on daily basis. Also, being able to enable ICT through e-Payment and usage of Mobile application. The implementation of ‘Phase II’ has been initiated on 4th August 2015 with the budget of Rs. 6.17 billion for the duration of four years.

The E-courts Mission Mode Project will not focus only on computerizing the courts across the country but it will definitely help in the automation of the management which would aid courts in greater scale to have an account of the cases. Probably, it will process in the installation of Video conferencing facility at all ICT enabled Courts, e-payment, and e-filing while enabling access through mobile applications for the citizen. This would help greatly in delivering of court notice and summons on time for litigants and lawyers. It also ensures the step to transparency in the government.

Know more about the E-Courts

The ICT enablement is upgraded in Supreme Court and High Court, where a unified national core software ‘Case Information System’ has been developed and made available for utilization at all ICT enablement Courts. The universal computerization of all courts will make use of the cloud computing where the digitization of case records will help in to have a track for instant reference or more. The e-Courts are operational and is opened for public access through websites of the districts individually as well as through NJDG, where the portal provides with service to Litigants, Lawyers, and Judiciary such as details of new filing of the case, Case status, the daily basis of orders and Judgments made. Through NJDG the Law Ministry can have data that will be aiding the Judiciary in monitoring and managing the government for survey or any policy-making purpose. 

The Core line of this Project is the Digital India Program of the Government of India which emphasizes on Citizen Centric Services, where the Project will mainly focus on the digital infrastructure in providing the citizen with governance and services while empowering citizens digitally.