Virtual Courts Are The Future Of Odisha Judiciary: Odisha Chief Justice Muralidhar

Chief Justice of Orissa High Court Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar recently spoke at an event organised by the High Court of Orissa to inaugurate e-filing 3.0 for the High Court and District and Subordinate Courts of the State, Vulnerable Witness Deposition Centres (VWDC) with Virtual Courtrooms in District Court Establishments and Odisha Judicial Workflow Automation System (OJWAS) for paperless office in the High Court. At the outset, he said that the VWDC project draws its vision from the judgment rendered by Dr. Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud in Smruti Tukaram Babade v. The State of Maharashtra & Anr. and also from what the Courts in Delhi did when he was a Judge at Delhi High Court. He extended due appreciation for the role played by Justice Gita Mittal, former Acting Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, in inaugurating VWDCs in every District Court Complex of Delhi. He said that learnings and experiences of Delhi were brought to Odisha. He appreciated the support extended by all the Judges of Orissa High Court, District Judges of the state, the Advocate General Mr. Ashok Parija, ASG Mr. P.K. Parhi and the members of High Court Bar and District Bars in implementing the project. He gave information about training programs organised for lawyers, law clerks and judicial magistrates at different levels to make them well-versed with digitalisation project. He categorically said that once a new ecosystem is brought by way of e-filing, all the stakeholders must be fully equipped. Therefore, the master-trainers are tirelessly engaged in continuous training programs. He informed the gathering that as a precursor to VWDCs, virtual court-rooms are inaugurated in four (4) districts of Odisha, starting from Angul and Nayagarh, which were inaugurated last year by Justice Chandrachud. He congratulated Dr. Bhagyalaxmi Rath (who is currently posted as the Registrar Administration in the High Court) and Ms. Rupashree Chowdhury, the then two women District Judges of Angul and Nayagarh respectively, for their efforts in establishing the virtual court-rooms and scheduling hearings at least for two months, whereby witnesses could testify virtually from remote locations. As the experiences in both the districts were encouraging, two more virtual court-rooms were established in the districts of Bhadrak and Malkangiri. He was pleased that now, VWDCs are doubled-up as virtual court-rooms, which means those court-rooms will remain occupied all the times for examining witnesses virtually. Any Judge can book those rooms for examination of witnesses remotely. He said, this is the future of the Odisha Judiciary. He conveyed the gathering that the Chief Justice's court-room has adopted live-streaming since last year and even more judges are interested to stream their court-rooms live. Plans are also there for paperless Courts in District Judiciary. He acknowledged that the State Judiciary has immensely learnt from the experiences of the Odisha Secretariat, which is entirely paperless. Officers of the High Court were sent to the State Secretariat for training. Lastly, he said that after inauguration of paperless Court of the Chief Justice (which was also done by Justice Chandrachud), three (3) more Judges of the High Court are holding paperless Courts and two (2) more have expressed their interest to go paperless. In this way, he said, the movement for paperless Courts is growing in Odisha.

Virtual Courts Are The Future Of Odisha Judiciary: Odisha Chief Justice Muralidhar

Jyoti Prakash Dutta

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