CJI DY Chandrachud Launches E-SCR Project For Digital Version Of Judgments Reported In Supreme Court Reports

The Chief Justice of India Dr Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud announced the launch of the electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) project. The project has been launched as a tribute to the nation in the New Year.

While announcing the project, CJI Chandrachud said–

"This is a free service available for lawyers across the country so young juniors do not have to pay. There is an elastic search facility. We are improving upon the search engine by incorporating the followed, distinguished and incorporated judgements in few weeks. As of now, the judgements are up to 01.01.2022. I have given a deadline of 15th February for judgements of 2022 also headnoted. With effect from today, all judgements will be placed online within 24 hrs. The access will be placed on mobile app which we had launched and also on National Judicial Data Grid. There are about 34,000 judgements. We are also introducing neutral citations. Delhi and Kerala High Court already have it. I have made a committee comprising of Justice Rajiv Shakdher of Delhi HC, Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan of Kerala High Court, and Justice Suraj Govindraj of the Karnataka High Court...three young tech savvy judges for this. They have prepared a report on neutral citations."

The e-SCR Project is an initiative to provide the digital version of the Supreme Court's judgments in the manner as they are reported in the official law report - 'Supreme Court Reports'. This is a project which, in essence, endeavours to take a step forward towards fulfilling the objective of digitization of Indian Judiciary and underlines the vision to bring in a positive change for the benefit of all the stakeholders of justice, primarily litigants and members of the Bar as also the High Courts, National Law University, Judicial Academies, etc.

The e- SCR project will showcase replica soft copies of SCRs by utilizing the verifiable authentic soft copies as available in the P F format. This project would create an invaluable resource as the entire gamut of judgments from the inception of the Supreme Court in the year 1950 till date would be available on e-SCR and digital repository. 

SCI has developed a search engine with the help of NIC, Pune comprising elastic search technique in the database of e-SCR. 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, bench strength search options. The inbuilt elastic search facilitates quick and user friendly search results.

The e SCR project will be rolled out on the Supreme Court’s website and would also be made available on the mobile application of the Supreme Court of India as also on the Judgment portal of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

E-SCR can be accessed here.