Govt pushes for e-filing in Delhi, Mumbai courts

NEW DELHI: Despite the poor response to a pilot project on electronic filing of cases in the Delhi district courts launched in December, Mumbai district courts will introduce e-filing of cases in the last week of February, an official familiar with the project said.

“By the end of this month, our testing for setting up e-filing facilities will be complete in Mumbai and then the process can start there as well,” Alok Srivastava, secretary justice, said.

Admitting to the slow pace of e-filing in Delhi, Srivastava said the ministry is organising workshops over the next two weeks in Delhi and Mumbai to “train and sensitise lawyers and judicial officers” in e-filing.

Another official said the government is keen on rolling out the e-filing facility because it will likely improve India’s score in the World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings. Mumbai and Delhi are the only two cities which are taken into account for computing the rankings for India.

The official said the main hurdle faced in Delhi is the poor response from lawyers to the facility, which entails filing cases electronically so that the litigation process can eventually turn paperless and entire case details can be accessed by the court at the click of the mouse.

However, at least three lawyers in Delhi that HT spoke with said they were not aware of the e-filing facility being available in the state at the district court level.

The Delhi project was launched in the Tis Hazari courts in December but is yet to take off, the official admitted.

“The facility requires lawyers to register with their details such as email and mobile numbers to allow the information system to become functional. The response to that has been poor,” the official said.

E-filing will also connect every case to an easily retrievable and much larger database.

More than 16,000 or India’s 22,000 courts have already been computerised under a pan-india e-courts project being overseen by a committee of the Supreme Court with support provided by the ministry. Once i mplemented, the facility is expected to speed up the disposal of cases and reduce pendency. It will also allow for better analysis of how various courts in the country are performing and pointing out the reasons for delay.