Dr. Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court of India and Chairperson, e-Committee of the Supreme Court on April 9, 2021, Friday, inaugurated a Judgments and Orders Portal for searching past judgments and orders and an e-Filing 3.0 module to allow electronic filing of court documents, through a virtual event. Several dignitaries including Shri Barun Mitra, Secretary, Department of Justice; Chief Justices of various High Courts; Dr. Neeta Verma, Director General, National Informatics Centre, and members of e-committee of Supreme Court joined the event virtually. The initiatives developed by Pune based e-Courts project team are aimed to strengthen the legal system.
The Judgments and Orders search portal is a repository of judgments pronounced by various High Courts in the country. It provides a facility to search judgments and final orders based on multiple search criteria. The main features of the portal are:
Justice Chandrachud, while speaking about the portal, said the judgment search portal, has data today of 38 million cases available, “We have data of 106 million cases which are being disposed of & are available & the total number of 141 million orders. With this mine of data, why not we provide a free search engine.”
The e-filing 3.0 module, introduced by the e-Committee of the Supreme Court, allows the electronic filing of court documents. With the introduction of the new module, there will be no need for lawyers or clients to visit the court premises for filing a case. The filing process can take place even when the court, client, and lawyer are at three different locations. “Lawyers sitting in their own office can do the entire exercise without traveling. And the project system was completed in a record time of 6 months,”
Shri Barun Mitra, Secretary, Department of Justice, highlighted various features of the e-filing 3.0, saying that the upgraded version 3.0 being launched today, is a much more user-friendly version which would simplify the registration of advocates on the e-filing software, enable Advocates to add their partners and clients on the e-filing module, provide online vakalatnama, readymade templates for pleadings, provision for online recording of the oath, digital signing of case papers, multiple application filing besides enabling the exchange of information and case papers effortlessly between advocates and courts without physical movement.
Secretary (Justice) stated that the launch of the two portals reaffirm that our court architecture and judicial processes have been able to continuously and creatively adapt to the fast-paced digital world. Mentioning that these times of adversity have dismantled long-standing perception barriers coming in the way of court digitization, he elaborated on how all the stakeholders have quickly adapted themselves to the new normal.
Shri Barun Mitra, also emphasized that the Constitution recognizes justice as one of the foremost deliverables for the people of India and the eCourts project has played a sustained role in ensuring citizen-centric justice and that in recognition of this exemplary work, this project has been conferred the Excellence in Digital Governance Award in 2020 by Government of India.
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