India News | SC Seeks Response of HCs, Centre on PIL Seeking E-inspection of Judicial Records

New Delhi, Jul 8 (PTI) In another step towards digitisation of the judiciary, the Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from all 25 high courts on a PIL seeking a nod for the lawyers and the litigants to e-inspect the digitised judicial records through either the official web portal or a mobile application.

A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra issued notices to the registrar generals of all the high courts and the Centre on the PIL filed by Kishan Chand Jain, a resident of Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

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The plea said the top court has “taken admirable and substantial strides towards introducing and leveraging technology for the purpose of ensuring 'access to justice,' encompassing e-filing, virtual hearings, live streaming, suSwagatam (ePass), argument transcripts, judgment translations, onboarding of Supreme Court of NJDG and e-SCR”.

Certain challenges, however, persist in effectively applying technology due to the lack of proactive initiatives by the high courts, the plea said, adding that e-inspection of digitized records is an area of concern.

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“Facilitate e-inspection of digitised records: To direct the high courts and their district courts to allow the applicants and/or their lawyers to conduct e-inspection of digitised court records (pending and disposed off) through the official web portal or mobile application.

“This may be uniformly regulated in accordance with 'the Delhi High Court Rules for Electronic Inspection of Digitized Court Records, 2023' and shall be limited to the persons who are eligible for physical inspections as per the Rules of the concerned Court,” it said.

It also sought a direction to the high courts and their district courts to implement a comprehensive digital case management system by “interlinking/hyperlinking” the digitised records of the district courts with those of the high courts both inter-court and intra-court”.

“This system must be designed to seamlessly interlink/hyperlink records, ensuring accessibility and efficiency in filing, hearing, and disposing of first appeals, second appeals, revisions, writ petitions, miscellaneous applications, and more...,” it said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)