Warrant Management System & PIL Portal: Last Two e-Initiatives Inaugurated By Justice Muralidhar Before Demitting Office

Before retiring later that day, the former Chief Justice of Orissa High Court Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar inaugurated Warrant Management System and PIL Portal on Monday. The event was attended by the Judges of the High Court, Director General of Police and Director, State Crimes Records Bureau (SCRB).

During his tenure, Justice Muralidhar had been instrumental in implementing a number of e-initiatives including e-filing, e-payment of Court fees, digitization of Court records, live-streaming of Courts, hybrid hearings, paperless Courts, e-libraries, Virtual Witness Deposition Centres (VWDCs), e-research tools for judicial officers etc. These two initiatives were the last additions made by him before demitting office.

Warrant Management System

Warrant Management System of the High Court was developed in coordination with the SCRB, Odisha to ensure expeditious transmission and tracking of warrants. The portal has the facility of issuing warrants to the police, tracking the status of execution of the warrants and acknowledgement of warrant execution.

Multiple types of warrant such as non-bailable warrants, bailable warrants, distress warrant, recommitment etc. can be issued through this portal. While issuing warrants, the details of the warrantee existing in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) can be automatically fetched to avoid erroneous data entry and reduce time.

“The warrants issued by the Courts will be notified on the dashboard of the local CCTNS module instantly, so that the concerned Police Officer can take immediate steps for execution of the same. Details of the executed warrants can be maintained in the portal for effective tracking and monitoring of the same by the Courts and the Police,” informed the High Court Registry.

Other features such as modification of warrantee address with history log, recall of warrants, re-generation of warrants and viewing of warrants etc. are also available for the Courts. Login credentials have been provided to all the warrant issuing Courts with different user roles such as High Court Admin, District Court Admin and Court Staff for secure and effective management of the Warrant Management System.

This portal also provides report module to generate reports of various types Police Station Wise Warrant Report, Court Wise Warrant Report etc. with the facility for exporting it to excel sheets. Warrant Management System was first made functional for the district of Cuttack and now it has been made functional for 7 districts namely, Angul, Balasore, Ganjam, Khurda, Koraput, Sambalpur and Rourkela in the district of Sundargarh.

PIL Portal

The Public Interest Litigation Portal has been started with the vision to disseminate information on a few of the significant pending PILs that have attracted the attention of the High Court. Apart from providing a brief description of the case, the portal intends to make accessible all the orders in that particular case.

Since some of these proceedings have been live streamed since August 2021, the links to the hearings are also provided in the portal. A person intending to file a PIL afresh in the High Court can now first check on this portal if there is a matter already pending on the same subject.

“Very often the lawyers filing PILs are not able to know that the same issue has already been pending before the court in an earlier filed PIL which leads to multiplicity of litigations. The lawyers bringing petitions before the Court in the matters of public interest are required to ensure that the issue sought to be raised by them is not already pending before the Court,” said the statement of the Registry.

The PIL Portal will substantially help to avoid multiplicity of petitions. It would also help researchers and students to conduct research on the PILs. It will be helpful for the Bench hearing PILs.

“The pleadings in the PILs are not made available as there are issues of privacy, confidentiality, and consequential issues of redaction, which will require more deliberation. The High Court welcomes suggestions on improving this portal and its features,” it stated further.

Address of Justice Muralidhar

While speaking in the function Justice Muralidhar expressed concern over pendency of huge number of unexecuted warrants in the police stations across the state and said it is not in the interest of rule of law if the executing arms of the court are unable to submit compliance report in respect of the warrants forwarded to them.

The Chief Justice informed that as many as 61,000 non-bailable warrants, 57000 bailable warrants, 3700 distress warrants and about 600 recommitment warrants are now pending for execution by the police stations, and hopefully, the Warrant Management System will help reduce these numbers.

Speaking on the PIL Portal the Chief Justice said very often the lawyers filing PILs are not able to know that the same issue has already been pending before the Court in a PIL filed earlier which leads to multiplicity of litigations. He said the lawyers bringing petitions before the Court in the matters of public interest should be more responsible and ensure that the issue is not already pending before the court.

The Chief Justice said the PIL Portal will help the citizens and the lawyers know the status of various PILs and the relevant orders and it also gives links to the live streaming hearings of PIL cases and reports of expert committees appointed by the Court. He expressed hope that both the Warrant Management System and the PIL Portal will go a long way in serving the cause of justice.