Govt has launched eCourts project for justice through use of tech: Rijiju

Union Law minister Kiren Rijiju, in a written reply to a member's query in the Rajya Sabha said the govt has launched the eCourts Integrated Mission Mode Project in the country

Union Law minister Kiren Rijiju, in a written reply to a member's query in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday said the government has launched the eCourts Integrated Mission Mode Project in the country for computerisation of district and subordinate courts with the objective of improving access to justice using technology.

He said as part of the National e-Governance Plan, the project has been under implementation since 2007 for ICT development of the Indian Judiciary based on the "National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in the Indian Judiciary".

"eCourts project is being implemented in association with the e-Committee Supreme Court of India and Department of Justice. Phase I of the project was implemented during 2011-2015. Phase II of the project started in 2015 under which 18,735 District and Subordinate courts have been computerised so far," the Union minister said.

Rijiju said phase II of the project is nearing its completion and the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for e-Courts Phase III has been finalised and approved by the committee put together by the Supreme Court on October 21, 2022.

The meeting of Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) Meeting was held on February 23, 2023. Other, requisite approvals of eCourts Project Phase-III are at an advanced stage, the statement informed further.

"Phase III of the project envisions the facilitation of various new features, a few of which are the digital initiatives that encompass Digital and Paperless Courts that aim to bring court proceedings under a digital format in a court; Online Court that focus on eliminating the presence of litigants or lawyers in the court through exploration and adoption of different forms of digitally enabled hearings; expansion of the scope of Virtual Courts beyond adjudication of Traffic Violations; use of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and its subsets like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) etc for analysis of case pendency, forecasting future litigation, etc," the minister said in his written reply.