Justice Chandrachud inaugurates portals for judgements, e-filing 3.0
By TIOL News Service
NEW DELHI, APR 12, 2021: SUPREME Court Justice DY Chandrachud on Friday inaugurated ajudgments and orders portal for searching past records and an e-filing 3.0 module to allow electronic filing of court documents. The initiatives developed by Pune-based e-Courts project team are aimed at strengthening the legal system.
At the virtual event, Justice Chandrachud, who is also the chair of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court, said they are in the process of finalising rules for live streaming proceedings.
The Judgments and Orders search portal is a repository of 38 million cases and judgements pronounced by various High Courts. It offers free text search to search judgments based on any keyword or combination of multiple keywords, and on criteria such as bench, case type, case number, year, petitioner or respondent name, judge name, act, section, disposal nature and decision date.
"We have data of 106 million cases which are being disposed of and are available anda total of 141 million orders. With this mine of data, why not we provide a free search engine," Justice Chandrachud added.
The e-filing 3.0 module will allow electronic filing of court documents, without the need for lawyers or clients to visit the court premises. 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 six months," he said.
The portal provides readymade templates which can help advocates to quickly draft their pleadings. These pleadings can be uploaded and shared with the clients who can e-sign them. The module will allow a litigant submitting the documents to video record their oath.
The portal will let lawyers add their colleagues and juniors as partners and allow all of them to work on a case collectively. It will also provide a portfolio management and case planner tool which will help track developments across respective cases.