E-Courts in India

E-Courts is a new concept where from filing of a petition till its disposal, use of paper is restricted to bare minimum. In a full fledged e-court, the lawyers would not need to carry bulky files but would come to court with laptops, pen drives and would be able to file the petitions in PDF.

E-courts help in various ways such as:

• Help judicial administrations of the courts streamline day-to-day activities
• Assist Judicial Administration in reducing pendency of cases
• Provide transparency of information to litigants
• Provide judges access to legal and judicial databases.

It was reported in media  in 2012 that all the courts in Delhi are set to get turned to e-courts soon. This is after the Court Fee Amendment Act, passed in May 2012 by the Delhi legislature, receiving Presidential assent recently. After this amendment, court fee can be paid electronically and filing of cases need not involve bulky paperwork. At present, e-courts have been introduced as a pilot project in six courts of the Delhi High Court and in five courts at the Karkardooma District Courts complex. The project is expected to expand by 2014 to cover all courts in the city.