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Follow UsNEW DELHI, INDIA: The Ministry of Law and Justice has aggressive plans to use IT as one of the key tools to reduce the pending cases and to tackle arrears in court.
The Ministry has planned to spend a total of Rs 890 crore in capacity building and to connect all the courts using ICT solutions.
“Average time for a case to conclude is 15 years. We want to reduce it to three years or less. We have suggested key measures like creation of national arrears grid, innovative measures like IT enablement capacity building at benches, subordinate courts among other, " said Dr. M. Veerappa Moily, Union Law Minister.
All the suggested measures would be open for consultation on October 24 and 25 . The cabinet has already approved initiative investment of Rs. 442 crore for capacity building in first phase and rest of the investment is yet to be cleared from the cabinet.
“We have already started connecting higher courts in phase I. We expect to connect other subordinate courts in this phase only by the end of 2010. In the first phase, the cabinet has approved a sum of Rs 442 crore. The total planned investment is Rs 890 crore and will wait for the cabinet approval for the rest of the fund," added B.Prasad, Additional Secretary (Justice), Ministry of Law and Justice.
Beside capacity building of IT infrastructure, the Law Minister also expressed immense need to train judges and other staff involved in case management.
The Ministry is also in talks with other states and ministries to start online filing of complaints to cut short the time taking and tedious run to police station or authorities concerned.
"Online complaint filing is part of the reforms that we have proposed. Quick disposal of cases is necessary but we have to also ensure that quality of justice is not compromised," said Moily.
There were around 30 million cases pending in various courts till June 30, 2009. Out of this, more than 25 million were pending with subordinate courts, over 4 million with high court and 50 thousand cases with Supreme Court.