eCourt services through Common Service Centres

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : Court case information such as judicial proceedings/decisions, case registration, cause list, case status, daily orders, and final judgments of all computerised district and subordinate courts of the country will now be available across all Common Service Centrss (CSCs) 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 1,670 crore. As on date, 16,845 district and subordinate courts has 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 up to 100 Mbps. eCourts services have now been successfully rolled out through SMS, email, web, mobile app etc. benefiting millions of litigants and advocates.

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 2 lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs).

The rural reach of the CSC’s is extensive envisaging a minimum of one CSC in each Gram Panchayat, thus enabling eCourts services to reach all corners of the country.

To ensure affordability, Department of Justice has decided not to charge any fee from the customers for eCourts related services delivered through CSC’s. However, towards cost of service, CSC’s has been authorised to charge Rs 5 for any of the 23 services available on Courts portal. Printing charges will be Rs 5 per page, if it is more than one page, according to a PIB release.