Revolutionizing Justice- Exploring Kerala High Court's Innovative, Paperless E-Court System For More Accessible Justice [PART-1]

“I will tell you the problem lies when you have Chief Justices who think technology is friendly and other Chief Justices think other-way. I am going to ensure that everybody is online. There is no question of 'I like technology, I don't'. Can anyone now say I won't use cellphone? This technological infrastructure has been created using public funds. All Chief Justices of the High Courts need to learn that they have to be on board. There are no exceptions". "Whether you are pro-technology or not, all Chief Justices of High Courts need to learn that technology is to be used."These recent comments of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, made during a hearing on plea to recognize virtual hearings as a fundamental right, drew a lot of attention from all quarters. He was expressing his disappointment with Chief Justices of High Courts who had begun dismantling virtual hearing infrastructure set up by High Courts in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. CJI Chandrachud has been a vocal supporter of integrating technology into the Indian legal system. He has time and again stressed on the significance of digitisation of the judiciary in facilitating access to justice.CJI DY Chandrachud has been at the helm of the e-Courts project of the Supreme Court of India, which is currently in its third phase. Guided by his vision, the Kerala High Court introduced a completely automated Case Management System (CMS), with a mission to become a paperless court.The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) initiatives are led by the Chief Justice S. Manikumar. The ICT Committee of the High Court that had been constituted to realize this vision of paperless courts comprises of Justice A. Muhamed Mustaque, Justice A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar, Justice P.B. Sureshkumar, Justice Shaji P. Chaly, and Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V. CMS governs the entire process of case-flow from the filing stage until the uploading of the order on the system. In this manner, the system has tried to incorporate absolute automation, transparency, access, and interoperability. In fact, the CMS is the very first Court Management Software system in the country endowed with the ability to automatically consume the data of e-filed cases.The system provides Dashboards for Judges, Advocates, Parties in person, Advocates’ Clerks, the Advocate General, the Central Government Counsel, and the Standing Counsel. One of the most significant aspects of this system has been the increased accessibility provided to all stakeholders. We had the privilege to study the “paperless system” that has been implemented by the Kerala High Court, and to interact with Justice A. Muhamed Mustaque, Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V., and the Deputy Registrar (IT) Mr. Joseph Rajesh. Notable Features Of Case Management SystemFor Advocates: The System provides for an ‘Advocate Dashboard’ that shows the number of cases by the registered lawyer from the date of commencement of his practice, indicating their status along with orders or judgments issued, if any. The dashboard also reveals the capacity in which the lawyer had appeared in each case.The Advocates’ Calendar indicates the number of cases of theirs that have been listed on a particular day, enabling them to plan their schedule in advance. In its pursuit of going paperless, the High Court has also made e-filing/ electronic filing of legal papers mandatory since January 1, 2022. What this implies is that cases can be filed and documents can be uploaded on the electronic platform, thereby saving time as well as cost in the process. The platform enables lawyers to file fresh caveats, counter-affidavits, objections, interlocutory applications, urgent memos, vakalath, and apply for certified copies of orders and judgments which would be sent to their registered email ID as well as on the dashboard. In fact, the caveat filing is one of the novel features of Kerala High Court in the sense that it is the only High Court where the caveat is auto numbered. Whenever a case is registered, the system would check whether any existing caveat is available in the database, and if so, it would tag the same to the case and the information would be displayed in the causelist.An Advocate simply has to register himself with the Bar Council ID in order to file cases. Parties in person can also resort to e-filing, in which they can use government IDs to register in a one-time manner. Apart from normal e-filing, the platform also provides for quick e-filing, which has simplified the process of filing, and condensed it to just four simple steps.The docket, bookmarks, the case file header and footer are all system generated. It also automatically numbers the pages, and docket, thus bringing uniformity, and providing a much-awaited solution to the cumbersome task of manually numbering large documents. The causelist for admission, hearing and urgent memo is also auto-generated.The server converts the documents into OCR (Optical Character Recognition) format, making...

Revolutionizing Justice- Exploring Kerala High Court's Innovative, Paperless E-Court System For More Accessible Justice [PART-1]

Navya Benny & Sheryl Sebastian

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