e-SCR portal

03-01-2024

e-SCR portal

Why in the news? 

    The Supreme Court of India’s monumental project of translating all of its 36,000 judgments into Scheduled Languages achieved unprecedented speed in 2023, with the E-SCR portal starting with just 2,238 translated judgements as of January and ending the year with over 31,000 rulings translated.  

About e-SCR portal:

• It is an initiative to provide the digital version of the apex court's judgements in the manner as they are reported in the official law report.
• The Supreme Court has developed a search engine with the help of the National Informatics Centre.
• It comprises elastic search technique in the database of e-SCR and the search facility in e-SCR provides for free text search, search within search, case type and case year search, judge search, year and volume search and bench strength search options.
• It will provide free access to its about 34,000 judgements to lawyers, law students and the common public.
• These verdicts will be available on the apex court website, its mobile app and on the judgment portal of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).       

About National Judicial Data Grid

• It is a national repository of data relating to cases instituted, pending, and disposed of by the courts across the length and breadth of the country.
• It has been developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC) in close coordination with the in-house software development team of the Computer Cell, Registry with an interactive interface and analytics dashboard.
• The entire database shall be periodically updated on the NJDG portal.
• Through this one may access case related information, statistics such as institution, pendency and disposal of cases, case-types, year-wise break-up of the Supreme Court of India.
• NJDG is a database of 18,735 orders, judgments and case details of District and Subordinate Courts and High Courts, created as an online platform under the e-Courts Project.
• The main feature of this portal is that the data is updated in real time and has detailed data up to the taluka level.
• NJDG has a repository of data on pending cases and their disposal from Taluka to National level.
• Till now, only the data up to the High Court level was available on the portal.

Importance:

• Uploading of data on NJDG will ensure transparency and accountability in the judicial sector.
• NJDG works as a monitoring tool to identify, manage cases and reduce pendency.
• It also helps in identifying specific obstacles in judicial processes. For example, if the number of land disputes increases in a particular state, this helps policy makers to see if the law needs to be strengthened.
• It provides data tools to courts to reorganize data and dispose of the oldest cases.
• It also helps in generating inputs related to particular areas of law. For example, to track cases related to land disputes, land records data of 26 states has been linked with NJDG.
• This will create better efficiency in the judicial system.
• This will increase coordination.
• This will help in taking quick and effective decisions.
• Its use will ensure maximum deployment of resources and manpower.

Cases pending in Supreme Court:

• A total of 80,501 cases, including 62,946 civil and 17,555 criminal cases, are currently pending in the Supreme Court by the year 2023.
• In August 2023, 5,412 cases were filed in the Supreme Court and 5033 cases were disposed of.
• In the Supreme Court, 585 cases are pending before a three-judge bench, 288 cases before a five-judge bench, 21 cases before a seven-judge bench and 135 cases before a nine-judge bench, all of which are civil cases

Source: The Hindu