On the occasion of Constitution Day 2022 (26 November), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi unveiled four new initiatives – the Virtual Justice Clock, the Digital Court, the JustIS mobile app 2.0, and the S3WaaS Websites under the E-Courts Project. In this context, read more about the E-Courts Project in this article. This is an important topic for the UPSC exam polity and governance section.
What is the E – Courts Project?
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The e-courts project was conceptualised on the basis of the “National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary – 2005” submitted by the e-Committee, Supreme Court of India.
- The aim is to transform the Indian judiciary through the ICT enablement of courts. It is to enhance judicial productivity, qualitatively and quantitatively, to make the judicial delivery system affordable, accessible, predictable, cost-effective, reliable and transparent.
- The e-courts project is undertaken by the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, GoI.
- Phase 1 of the project started in 2007 and ended in 2015. Phase 2 was sanctioned by the government in August 2015 and is currently underway.
- Some of the features of the project include the National Judicial Data Grid NJDG, ePayment (of court fees, fines, etc.), National Service and Tracking of Electronic Process (NSTEP) which provides an electronic mechanism to bailiffs by providing PDAs for speedy, transparent and timely delivery of process, virtual courts, eChallans, etc.
E-Courts Project Objectives:
- To provide efficient & time-bound citizen-centric service delivery as detailed in eCourt Project Litigant’s Charter.
- To develop, install & implement decision support systems in courts.
- To automate the processes to provide transparency in the accessibility of information to its stakeholders.
- To enhance judicial productivity, both qualitatively & quantitatively, to make the justice delivery system affordable, accessible, cost-effective, predictable, reliable and transparent.
Some of the newly added features under the e-courts project are mentioned below:
- Virtual Justice Clock
- To display vital statistics of the justice delivery system at the court level giving the details of the cases instituted, cases disposed of and pending cases on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
- This initiative is an effort to make the working of courts transparent and accountable.
- Any person can access the Virtual Justice Clock on the District Court website.
- JustIS Mobile App. 2.0
- It is a tool that judicial officers can use to effectively manage their courts and cases by keeping track of the cases that are pending before their court as well as the judges who work under them.
- Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts can now monitor the pendency and disposal of all the states and districts under their jurisdiction.
- Digital Court
- It is an initiative to make the case records available to the judge in digitised form to enable the transition to paperless courts.
- S3WaaS Websites
- It is a cloud service developed for government entities to generate secure, scalable and sugamya (accessible) websites.
- It is a framework to generate, configure, deploy and manage websites for publishing specified information and services related to district judiciary.
- It is multilingual, citizen-friendly and also friendly for physically challenged persons.
E-Courts Project:- Download PDF Here
| Related Links | |||
| Indian Judiciary | Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court | ||
| Judicial Doctrines | Judicial Review | ||
| Judicial Overreach | Judicial Activism | ||
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