eCourt Services India- Ecourts Case Status

An e-court is a virtual web-based courthouse that provides 24/7 online access to court services, relevant records and information such as court calendars to litigants and lawyers. It includes a modern courtroom that offers audio and video conferencing capabilities, electronic disclosure, and digital presentation features, together with support for the automated electronic processing of high-volume cases.

Its objectives are:

• To help judicial administration in streamlining their day-to-day activities
• To assist judicial administration in reducing the pendency of cases
• To provide transparency of information to the litigants
• To provide judges with easy access to legal and judicial databases

Many courts now facilitate electronic filings, and back office staff in the vast majority of courts use modern technological solutions to ease their work-load. Although this refers less to the physical environment and more to the administrative back-office processes, it allows people to file certain documents electronically, receive electronic notifications of deadlines and access to on-going case dockets, filed cases and decisions.

The e-courts project in India has been conceptualized on the basis of the "National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary -2005" prepared by the e-committee of the Supreme Court. The Indian judiciary comprises of nearly 15,000 courts situated in approximately 2,500 court complexes throughout the country. Under the e-Courts project, it is proposed to implement ICT in Indian judiciary in 2 phases over a period of 5 years. The project aims to develop, deliver, install, and implement automated decision-making and decision-support systems in 700 courts across Delhi, Bombay, Kolkata and Chennai; 900 courts across 29 State/ Union Territory capitals; and 13,000 district and subordinate courts across the Nation.

In Phase-I of the e-Courts Project beginning from 2007, a large number of Court Complexes, Computer Server Rooms, and Judicial Service Centres have been readied for computerization of the District Courts. The District and Taluka Court Complexes covered in Phase-I have been computerized with the installation of hardware, LAN and Case Information Software (CIS), for providing basic case related services to the litigants and the lawyers.

Phase II, which is currently in progress, aims at setting up of centralized filing centers, digitization of documents, adoption of document management systems, the creation of e-filing and e-payment gateways.

The present government is taking active steps to establish e-courts all over India. All these government efforts will result in providing quick and cost-effective solutions to the litigants. Majorly, the following are the advantages of having a judicial system governed through e-court facility:

• The Indian judiciary with the help of e-courts can overcome the challenges and make the service delivery mechanism transparent and cost-efficient.
• The e-courts will benefit the judicial system to provide flexible retrieval of stored information allowing judges to view the proceedings of a previous case or to retrieve other important documents at the click of a button.
• Data sharing between different courts and various departments will also be made easy as everything would be available online under the integrated system.
• With the help of video conferencing, the accused and the witnesses can be made to participate in the proceedings from various locations other than the courtroom. This will, to a certain extent, reduce the time required to solve the case and will also be cost effective.
• Litigants and lawyers can search the current status and the history of a Case using CNR number of the Case / Case Registration Number/ Party name/ Advocate name etc. and can view court orders using case number / Court number / Order date/ Party name/ Advocate name along with Cause list of a court.