New Delhi, March 12 (IANS) As part of e-Courts Mission Mode Project, more than 660.36 crore pages of court records have been digitised and courts have conducted over 3.97 crore hearings through video conferencing facilities, the Centre told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Minister of State (MoS) (Independent Charge) for Law and Justice, Arjun Ram Meghwal, in a written reply, said the Union government has demonstrated its commitment in modernising judiciary with advanced digital infrastructure by significantly increasing the budget of Phase-III (2023–2027) to Rs 7,210 crore.

He said that this phase envisions transforming Indian courts into digital and paperless courts by digitising legacy and current case records, expanding video conferencing to all courts, jails, and hospitals, and extending online courts beyond traffic violations.

It also aims for universal saturation of e-Sewa Kendras, creation of a state-of-the-art cloud-based data repository for storing digitised court records and applications, and deployment of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for case analysis and forecasting.

MoS Meghwal said that under this phase, 2,444 e-Sewa Kendras have been established to enhance citizen service delivery.

“Nearly 1.07 crore cases have been filed electronically through the e-Filing platform. Live streaming of court proceedings has expanded to four additional High Courts in Uttarakhand, Calcutta, Telangana, and Meghalaya, making it 11,” he added.

“All e-Courts portals are now hosted on the National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) cloud infrastructure, and district court websites have been migrated to the Secure, Scalable, and Sugamya Website as a Service (S3WAAS) platform,” MoS Meghwal said.

“The Case Information System (CIS) has been upgraded to version 4.0, introducing enhanced objectivity, transparency, and speed in case management,” he added.

“Advanced AI-based tools are being integrated into judicial workflows, such as the AI/ML-enabled defect identification module developed by the Supreme Court in collaboration with IIT Madras, and the Legal Research and Analysis Assistant (LegRAA) developed by NIC’s Centre of Excellence under the guidance of the e-Committee,” the MoS said.

“The Digital Courts platform enables judges to access all case-related documents, pleadings, and evidence digitally, marking a significant leap toward a paperless court ecosystem,” MoS Meghwal added.

“The e-Courts Mission Mode Project’s Phase-I, initiated in 2011 with an outlay of Rs 935 crore, primarily focused on establishing the foundational digital infrastructure of the judiciary.

It achieved computerisation of 14,249 district and subordinate courts, installation of Local Area Network (LAN) in 13,683 courts, and software enablement of 13,672 courts for digital case management, video conferencing facilities in 493 courts and 347 jails,” he said.

The project’s Phase-II, implemented from 2015 to 2023 with an outlay of Rs 1,670 crore, expanded the scope from basic computerisation to providing citizen-centric digital services.

“The number of computerised courts rose to 18,735, representing a 31.5 per cent increase over Phase-I. Video conferencing facilities expanded more than fivefold, covering 3,240 courts (a 557 per cent increase) and 1,272 jails (a 266 per cent increase),” MoS Meghwal added.

–IANS

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