Catching up in the cyberworld

A tiny virus has forced judiciary to shake off its digital inertia

Like health care and several other sectors, judiciary has also found itself unprepared to meet the challenges thrown up by the tiny coronavirus. While the government has been shaken out of the lethargy of decades in health care, the judiciary has no easy solution to its problems, which were soaring for decades. This is not force majeure, but comeuppance of the mundane kind. Judiciary and the executive have let the situation deteriorate and the result is 30 million pending cases and more.

Though the then chief justice had declared in the presence of the prime minister three years ago that the Supreme Court will go practically paperless from July 2017, the progress in adopting cyber technology was not proportionate to the aspirations raised. Only a few hundred e-petitions have been filed so far. The lockdown has boosted the figure to 305 this month. How and whether they have been heard in the courtroom is difficult to gauge as they have not been conspicuous to the regular visitors to the court. On the other hand, a tour of the court complex will show how the corridors are constricted by two rows of steel almirahs on either side, overstuffed with dog-eared files. Recently the court acquired some 12 acres nearby but that has not reduced the paper mounds.

The court revers conventions and therefore hesitated to let even basic technology disturb the status quo. For instance, a loudspeaker system was in place since the 1980s but it has rarely been used by the judges. As a result the courts and corridors have people with stretched necks and long ears. Petitions have been filed demanding telecast or streaming of the proceedings of the court, but except sympathetic observations of judges hearing them, little has been done. Now the court has found itself in the predicament of hearing arguments, only in urgent cases, through videoconferencing and WhatsApp. Before the spread of coronavirus, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) was mentioned in judicial administration. AI, which is said to read 10 lakh words per second, will alter the nature of the legal profession and introduce transparency and remove corruption. There’s the rub.

During the lockdown period, the court has heard some 400 cases via videos. There were several glitches as all counsel could not appear and the open court principle took a beating. Faced with these snags, the court is reportedly experimenting with limited live webcasting and e-filing software. But it seems too little, too late; such revolutionary steps cannot be done as a knee-jerk reaction. Alice found herself in a place in Wonderland where she had to run to stand where she was. Coronavirus has taught judiciary that this is one such time and place.

Since the Supreme Court takes up mainly appeals from high courts and tribunals, they should also be electronically well equipped. According to Chief Justice S A Bobde, 26.84 lakh pages of documents were transmitted from 17,500 subordinate courts to the high courts in January alone. Many of them will reach the SC in due time. Their records have to be digitally prepared before the appeals could be heard. However, the infrastructure of subordinate courts is so pathetic that judges there have to work without chambers, library and basic amenities. These are all well-documented in judgments and reports of visiting judges. Moreover, digital literacy does not come easily, especially to ageing judges. The preparations should have started long ago.

Several high courts have websites which retain their outmoded format, unhelpful to the public. If one wants to read an important judgement of some high courts which has political or social impact, one would be grappling with the mouse, mostly in vain. One would have to feed the case number, diary number, lawyers’ names, the judges’ names. Some judgments carry a half-witted query on top for judges to tick-mark: Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes/No. Moreover, the formats of the 25 high court websites are not uniform, though they were designed by the National Informatics Centre. All these and innumerable other factors make the journey from the Dickensian era to the age of virtual courts long and arduous.