‘Change is the measure of time’ quoted Hon’ble Justice Dr. D Y Chandrachud; from a Rebecca Solnit’s book titled ‘Recollections of my Non-Existence’ while speaking in a Webinar organized by Nayay Forum which is a student run think tank of NALSAR, Hyderabad on the topic of ‘Future of Virtual Courts and Access to Justice in India.’
Justice Chandrachud began his address by making two caveats, one of which voiced his sentiments about and relationship with technology. He stated that he is not tech savvy and therefore, his assessment of technology driven future may not be grounded but he believed in the ‘potential of technology enabled justice delivery system.’ The second caveat he made was about the ‘art of pursuance’ which has always proved handy in his profession as a lawyer and which continues to assist him in his judicial endeavors including the making of an exuberant case for a ‘robust’ technology enabled future for Judiciary. In his address Lordship indeed made a well-founded case for interplay of technology and judicial system but he was not oblivious of the fact that technological access is not uniform and therefore, a divide which it can create between the haves and the have-nots. He discussed in detail that the response generated by the Indian Judiciary to this pandemic, especially establishing e-Seva Kendrs, which has brought systems and infrastructure in place to make justice accessible to all the stakeholders.
To begin with, Sir laid down three fundamental principles namely; (a) access to justice to common masses; (b) technology intrinsic element of rule of law; and (c) making ‘Justicing’ an indispensible ‘service’ to the people rather than taking it as a mere sovereign function, to be considered in making any endeavor to establish interface between technology and justice delivery system. He mentioned that technology is an adjunct of rule of law but our vision of creating an interface between judiciary and technology, must be looked upon considering the reality of technical access in India and for this, Hon’ble Justice made reference to certain data which highlighted that between 2017- 2020 internet penetration has expanded many fold across the length and breadth of the country but as per TRAI data the internet density in India stands at 52 percent, 66 percent population in India resides in rural areas of which only 27 has access to the internet and only 25 per Indian have access to smart phones.
Steps taken by judiciary in moving forward in the direction of Virtual Courts- Video Conferencing and E-filing
He mentioned that COVID-19 descended without warning as pandemics do, and the Supreme Court responded actively by limiting the presence of various stake holders, sanitizing court complexes, temperature checking at court premises etc. Once the lockdown was announced, it was apparent that courts must continue because criminal justice system cannot come to a halt no matter what and therefore, working of the Court was a paramount requisite. He further mentioned that economic lockdown during a pandemic may lead to lessening of commercial suits but eventuality of increasing criminal cases, delays in interrogation, examination of witnesses and above all liberty of accused who are detained as under-trials for an extended period, was foreseeable and therefore SC extended limitation period for such cases. Lordship made a very important proposition that public health emergency initiated due to the Coronavirus pandemic requires active presence of a welfare state but irrespective of the policy decisions of the state, “it is a courts duty court, civil, criminal and constitutional to protect the rights of the citizens, to ensure governmental accountability and prevalence of rule of law.”
While discussing the past, present and future road-map of actions taken and awaited by the Judiciary, Justice Chandrachud mentioned that two substantial changes took place in Courts; video conferring and e- filing, which could have been possible because of; (a) availability of robust infrastructure already in place; (b) consultation with stakeholders; (c) training; and (d) platform development and testing. He mentioned that in the Supreme Court, an e-filing module is in place, a demo of which was given by a webinar. The suggestion of the Bar is awaited because “the essence of our success in our mission to incorporate technology will lie in the confidence of all stakeholders in the envisioned process. A regulatory regime for Virtual hearings over VC which was vital to the process was created.” SC passed orders u/a 142 of the Constitution and a Committee of five judges of the IT Committees of High Courts was made which prepared a framework of e-filing which is now placed in public regime for their suggestions and implementations. Hon’ble Justice mentioned provided an update on the five projects which are under process before the e-Committee, namely, laying down an SOP for digitization, SOP for e-filing across the country, rules for live streaming, inter-operable criminal justice system-the ICJS platform and the interlinking of Law Libraries across the country.
After having laid the foundation of the actions taken by Judiciary to make Justice a perennial service, Hon’ble Justice put forth figures on pendency of cases, year, state, stage, court wise and their reasons, in percentage to support the proposition that use of technology enables us to identify the pyramid which is to be attacked first to cure ailments of Justice delivery system. He mentioned that the work on virtual courts started back in around 2007 in two phases, the first of which started from Feb 2007 to Mar 2015 with a sanctioned out lay of 935 Crore. This phase saw installation of infrastructure in various Courts, creating a Case Information Software which gave information of the bulk of pending cases in Court across India while phase 2 was launched in August 2015 and it covers four years or until the phase is completed. Justice mentioned that; “as part of the e-court project, various initiatives were taken up, model rules on video conferencing were framed and circulated in High Courts for acceptance. One of the stark features of these rules is that it provides for availability of all recourse to CV to public masses. The second feature is the customization of the operating system software, which has used open use source software which has resulted in creating significant saving on public exchequer.” He briefly also talked about the establishment of e-Seva Kendra to technology accessible to all stakeholders.
Virtual Courts
Highlighting a very major leap in making virtual courts a reality, Justice Chandrachud mentioned that Virtual Court has been working in Delhi since July 2019 and it has been dealing with petty traffic cases related to traffic Chalans. As a result of these virtual courts, 20 judicial officers who used to work in these courts have been replaced only one Judge who is able to work efficiently.
Lordship, gave an important update about the launching of second phase of this project by which “CCTV footages of offending vehicles breaking traffic rules are captured, sent to the main server, the Parivahan data is collected and sent to the user of the offending vehicle and the user can actually track the offence which is charged against his/ her vehicle and that person has the facility to pay fine online if (s)he doesn’t want to contest the claim.”
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