NEW DELHI: As many as 18, 735 district and subordinate courts have been computerised under the e-courts Integrated Mission Mode Project aimed at enhancing access to justice through technology, the Parliament was informed on Friday.
Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal told Lok Sabha in reply to a question that the highest number of 2, 222 district and subordinate courts were computerised in Uttar Pradesh under the supervision of Allahabad High Court.
The second largest number of 2, 157 lower courts were computerised under the supervision of the Bombay High Court in Maharashtra.
The number of courts computerised in Madhya Pradesh was 1, 363, Gujarat 1, 268, Rajasthan 1, 240, Bihar 1, 142 and Karnataka 1, 363.
MoS Meghwal said that eCourts Phase III (2023-2027) was approved by the Union Cabinet in September 2023 at an outlay of Rs 7, 210 crore, which is over four times the funding for Phase II.
He said the project envisages various new digital initiatives, such as the establishment of Digital and Paperless Courts that aim to bring court proceedings under a digital format and digitisation of court records (both legacy records and pending cases).
He said under the eCourts Phase III, efforts will also be made for the expansion of video conferencing facilities to courts, jails and hospitals, the scope of online courts beyond adjudication of traffic violations, a saturation of all court complexes with eSewa kendras, state of the art and latest Cloud-based data repository for easy retrieval and supporting the digitised court records, software applications, live streaming, and electronic evidence, use of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and its subsets like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis of case pendency, forecasting future litigation, etc.
A new “Judgment Search” portal has been started with features such as search by Bench, Case Type, Case Number, Year, Petitioner/ Respondent Name, Judge Name, Act, Section, Decision: From (Date), To (Date) and Full Text Search. This facility is being provided free of cost to all, the MoS said.
As a part of the project, 605 trainings and awareness programmes on the ICT services provided under the eCourts project were conducted from May 2020 to October 2024 covering nearly 6, 64, 144 stakeholders, including High Court Judges, Judges of the District Judiciary, Court Staff, Master Trainers among Judges/DSA, Technical Staff of High Courts, and Advocates, the House was informed.