Can innovative e-court system eliminate India's legal anguishes?
Even though India is being termed as one of the most vigorous economies at the moment and also an upcoming superpower, a great divide exists between the urban and rural sectors of the country and as per recent reports, this polarization is enhancing by leaps and bounds. However, this is not the only problem that is afflicting India. Judiciary of India is on the verge of getting stagnant and if we rely on rtiIndia.org, there is in the region of 30 million pending cases in Indian courts.
Well, in order to shun all these anguishes and also to speed up the legal process, the Delhi High Court (HC) has introduced the first e-courtroom in India. It has been found that this is an eco-friendly attempt by the HC to replace paper files with a sleek LCD screen and a touchscreen handbook. Can this solve the thumping crisis? We are not sure but this is definitely a cutting-edge approach.
What can be the foremost benefits then? It has been learnt that many paper files in the court of Justice S Ravindra Bhatt have now been digitalized and judges can unswervingly access them on a display monitor. The court aims to digitalize all the documents within a couple of years, the pilot project went on smoothly on day one. On the first day, 33 cases were listed in which about 18 were disposed of within the first two hours, which would have usually taken the whole day. The LCD touchscreen was used by the judge so as to correct and certified the copy using his digital signature.
At this time, the court has digitalized something like 5.5 crore papers pertaining to a range of cases up to 2007. It is also looking at recording the testimonial of witnesses through video-conferencing to stay away from procedural delays.
But we have a single question. Will this be the normal process in good time instead of current conventional and wretched one? Or else there is no hope.
India has launched innovative processes from time to time but all have become easy preys of bureaucratic procedure. So we ought to remain alert.
