e-Justice to rein in corruption?

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As the Centre embarks on ICT-driven governance, the justice delivery is perhaps left on periphery. The digitization of courts is indolent, while litigants in across close to 15,000 Indian courts yearn for judicial reform.

Blame it on red tape or judicial apathy, or the lackluster Internet penetration, but more than 300 crore pending lawsuits await early disposal. Despite much fuss, there is no respite in sight from the mammoth backlog, coupled with courtroom malpractices.

The Ministry of Law and Justice has proposed implementation of ICT and earmarked Rs 935 crore through mission mode projects. Government may laud digitization of many courts, but on the flip side, full-service electronic proceedings that include e-Filing and e-Trails, is still a distant dream.

Even though India's apex court has begun e-Filing in 2006, it's apparently defunct since the service is being made available to Advocate on Record or a Party in Person. Ironically, this makes nearly 98 per cent of the lawyers disqualified.

The woes include lack of techno-legal expertise among judicial officials as well as unavailability of seamless high bandwidth connectivity and collaboration between various prisons, police stations and digital records.

Speaking to CIOL, a noted Supreme Court counsel and CEO of the Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) Praveen Dalal believes that establishment of e-Courts in India require techno-legal expertise which he said, is currently missing.

ICT-enabled courtrooms are however one of the pressing needs and despite this, the ambitious project is yet to see the light of day. To this date, he said, there is no full-fledged e-Court in the country, albeit, a couple of Delhi courts, moving over to touchscreen displays and digital access.

"Till now e-Filing of cases and documents in Indian courts is not possible. We have only computerized some court functions at most," Dalal informed. Techno-legal training programs to judges at all levels, he stressed, is de rigueur to make e-Courts successful in India.