Courts to go online

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, March 29: Citizens can soon get redressal of their legal grievances at the click of a mouse.The Centre has mooted what it calls E-courts enabling citizens to file complaints and petitions from their comfy of their homes.
After an successful attempt of introducing electronic filing system in the SupremeCourt , the apex court asked the Chief Justices of the High Courts across the country to insists the state government to set up paperless courts onexperimental basis in the high courts.
According sources in the AP High Court the Cheif Justice AR Dave isexpected to have a meeting with the Chief Minister Dr Y S RajasekharReddy in next month.
Sources told this correspondent that the Chief Justice will discuss about theE -Courts apart from the construction new building for the High Court andbudgetary allocations for the High Court during the meeting.
The ensuing E-filing process through which any advocate-on-record orpetitioner-in-person can file a case in the High Court through the Internet,from any where through the web site of the court.At present the Supreme Court collecting the court fee and printing charges at Rs1.50
a page.
The petitioner can be paid through any visa/master creditor debit card. No additional court fee or processing fee will have to be paid for e-filing.The E-Court will have facility of multimedia presentation facility and ready for loading of dictation software apart from E-filing. It can enable remote arguing as and when video conferencing is madeavailable.
The petitioner-in-person will, however, have to submit proof of his or heridentity such as ration card or PAN card or driving licence card by scanning the document.The petitioner and advocates can file their counters, rejoinder, fresh applications, caveat and other additional documents through the web siteand can be modified before the matter submitted to the court.
Every advocate will be given a password by the Registry. It is possiblefor him to change the password by accessing the web site. A unique reference number to be given to every user for each case.
According to the employees of the High Court the registry staff no longer needs huge storage spaces for filing the case documents.
The documents are filed securely in an electronic format.They said that pro-active alerts using the email on case status kept the users well informed in advance to take necessary actions.
The employees felt after the introducing of the E -filing that they would be relived from the mundane tasks of booking a case, going through document hard-copies for defect discovery .
However the Center has already provided computers and laptops to the rsidences and Chambers of the Justices of the AP High Court. All the court masters and senior officers, apart from typists were provided with Computers.
The Center has prepared this Mission Mode Project of E-Courts based on the National Policy and Action Plan of the E-Committee. The first phase of the scheme is to be completed by February 2009 at all High Courts.
After the introducing of the E-Courts the High Court will establish omputer Kiosks at the secretariat ,collectorates where even general public and the government departments can have access and also at major railway stations and bus stations to provide more accessibility tothe justice to a common citizen.