Court case information such as judicial proceedings/decisions, case registration, cause list, case status, daily orders, and final judgments of all computerized district and subordinate courts of the country will now be available across all Common Service Centers in the country. The Government of India had initiated second phase of the eCourts project as one of the National e-Governance projects, in August, 2015 with an outlay of Rs 1670 crore. As on date, 16845 district and subordinate courts have been IT enabled.
The eCourts project has made significant progress under the guidance of e-Committee of Supreme Court of India in computerising district and subordinate courts of the country through installation of case information software, hardware and local area network in courts. They are also being connected on Wide Area Network through a dedicated network offering bandwidth upto 100 Mbps. eCourts services have now been successfully rolled out through SMS, email, web, mobile app, etc.
In order to provide efficient and time-bound access to the courts services to litigant public, who are on the other side of the digital divide and don’t have access to internet, the Department of Justice has decided to deliver eCourts services to them through around two lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs).
The rural reach of the CSCs is extensive, envisaging a minimum of one CSC in each Gram Panchayat, thus enabling eCourts services to reach all corners of the country. The collaboration between Department of Justice and Common Service Centers would thus mean that litigants can access easily, and readily case status information available on eCourts database from any CSC. The eCourts database contains case information in respect of over 10 crore cases and more than seven crore orders / judgments.
To ensure affordability, Department of Justice has decided not to charge any fee from the customers for eCourts related services delivered through CSCs. However towards cost of service, CSC’s has been authorised to charge Rs 5 for any of the 23 services available on Courts portal.
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