Dr Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court of India and Chairperson, e-Committee of the Supreme Court on April 9, 2021, Friday, inaugurated a Judgments and Orders Portal for searching past judgments and orders and an e-Filing 3.0 module to allow electronic filing of court documents, through a virtual event. Several dignitaries including Shri Barun Mitra, Secretary, Department of Justice; Chief Justices of various High Courts; Dr. Neeta Verma, Director General, National Informatics Centre and members of e-committee of Supreme Court joined the event virtually. The initiatives developed by Pune based e-Courts project team are aimed to strengthen legal system.

 The Judgments and  Orders search portal is a repository of judgments pronounced by various High Courts in the country. It provides facility to search judgements and final orders based on multiple search criteria. The main features of the portal are:

• Free text search facilitates user to search judgments based on any keyword or combination of multiple keywords
• Users can also search judgments based on various criteria like including bench, case type, case number, year, petitioner/ respondent name, judge name, act, section, disposal nature and decision date. Combination of several search options assist the users to get the desired results.
• The embedded filtering feature allows further filters on available results, thus adding value to the search.

Justice Chandrachud, while speaking about the portal, said the judgment search portal, has data today of 38 million cases available, “We have data of 106 million cases which are being disposed of & are available & the total number of 141 million orders. With this mine of data, why not we provide a free search engine.”

The e-filing 3.0 module, introduced by the e-Committee of the Supreme Court, allows electronic filing of court documents. With the introduction of the new module, there will be no need for lawyers or clients to visit the court premises for filing of a case. The filing process can take place even when the court, client and lawyer are at three different locations. “Lawyers sitting in their own office can do the entire exercise without travelling. And the project system was completed in a record time of 6 months,”

Shri Barun Mitra, Secretary, Department of Justice, highlighted various features of the efiling 3.0, saying that the upgraded version 3.0 being launched today, is a much more user-friendly version which would simplify the registration of advocates on the efiling software, enable Advocates to add their partners and clients on the efiling module, provide online vakalatnama, readymade templates for pleadings, provision for online recording of oath, digital signing of case papers, multiple application filing besides enabling exchange of information and case papers effortlessly between advocates and courts without physical movement.

Secretary (Justice) stated that the launch of the two portals reaffirm that our court architecture and judicial processes have been able to continuously and creatively adapt to the fast-paced digital world.   Mentioning that these times of adversity have dismantled long-standing perception barriers coming in the way of court digitization, he elaborated on how all the stake-holders have quickly adapted themselves to the new normal.

Shri Barun Mitra, also emphasized that the Constitution recognizes justice as one of the foremost deliverables for the people of India and the eCourts project has played a sustained role in ensuring citizen centric justice and that in recognition of this exemplary work, this project has been conferred the Excellence in Digital Governance Award in 2020 by Government of India. 

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RKJ/M