Litigants to get alerts on email
NEW DELHI: Trial courts will now update litigants about the status of their cases through email, a step expected to bring transparency and efficiency in the lower judiciary bogged down by a mountain of pending cases.
A mail is sent out the day the case is heard, informing the litigants about the day’s proceedings and the next date of hearing. The litigants also get a reminder mail a day before the hearing.
“For this a litigant has to provide email address while filing a case. In case of a respondent, it should be done at the time when the person marks an appearance for the first time,” a judicial officer associated with the project told HT on Sunday.
NEWDELHI: Trial courts will now update litigants about the status of their cases through email, a step expected to bring transparency and efficiency in the lower judiciary bogged down by a mountain of pending cases.
A mail is sent out the day the case is heard, informing the litigants about the day’s proceedings and the next date of hearing.
The litigants also get a reminder mail a day before the hearing.
“For a litigant to be a receiver of such a mail, he or she has to provide email address while filing a case. In case of a respondent, it should be done at the time when the person marks an appearance for the first time,” a judicial officer associated with the project told HT on Sunday.
Launched a fortnight ago, the automated email facility is a new project under the e-courts programme started in 2005 to digitise judicial proceedings.
India’s judicial system is hobbled by backlog. Around 27 million cases are pending in courts across the country, 2.81 million of these are in trial courts.
Conceived by Supreme Court’s e-courts committee, the mailing system comes two years after the panel began the National Judicial Data Grid, which is open to public and gives district-wise break up of pending cases.
Headed by justice MB Lokur, the committee designed a training program for the trial-court staff. “Somebody has to feed the case information in the system and then only it can be processed as a mail,” the officer said.
A group of officials has been trained and will further coach their colleagues.
These district system administrators and system administrators are experts in both hardware and software.
The idea is to provide information directly to a litigant. “It has come to our notice that on many occasions lawyers do not give their clients the correct picture of what happens in the court,” the officer said.
Advocates, too, can avail this facility.
The next step would be to extend the programme to all 24 high courts in the country. Since the data grid was now available for high court cases, e-courts committee is working towards providing this facility to HC litigants.
“We need to overcome some technical roadblocks. Soon six high courts are likely to start and we hope to reach the remaining by year end,” the officer said.
DISTRICT JUDGES HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO MAKE USE OF NATIONAL JUDICIAL DATA GRID. ONLINE TRAINING MANUALS HAVE BEEN UPLOADED ON THE GRID.