'Judiciary Shall Embrace The Use of E-governance': Justice Chandrachud Says While Inaugurating Delhi's New Virtual Courts System

The occasion was marked by the inaugural address of Justice DY Chandrachud of the Supreme Court and the list of attendees included Chief Justice DN Patel of the Delhi High Court, and the other judges of the High Court namely Justice Rajiv Shakdher, Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, Justice Prathiba M Singh and Justice Navin Chawla.

The event started with the opening address of Justice Rajiv Shakdher, who's also the Chairman of the Delhi High Court's IT Committee.

Justice Shakdher discussed the functioning of the virtual courts system which has been successfully working in Delhi since July 26, 2019.

Existing Delhi Virtual Court caters adjudication of eChallans, where the offender is physically intercepted by the police. Owing to this system, the visit of more than 3000 offenders per day in the court is avoided.

Justice Shakdher also presented the following data to the audience:

'More than 7,32,061 cases are disposed off wherein offenders have paid the fine. In all Rs. 89,54,66,712 amount of fine is collected so far. Single Judge is handling all the cases. Around 20 Judges in Delhi who were earlier occupied in dealing with traffic challan cases are free to adjudicate other cases.'

Justice Prathiba M Singh also emphasised upon the importance of the virtual courts system by highlighting that it is a cooperative effort with the Delhi Police.

After this, the Commissioner of Delhi Police, Mr DN Srivastava, informed the gathering about the functioning of the virtual courts system. He said the second phase of the virtual court system will increase the transparency of regulation and discipline.

Mr Srivastava further added that despite the, there are thousands of violations which are taking place daily, and the numbers are bound to increase three-fold once the vehicles start plying again.

Thereafter, the gathering was addressed by Chief Justice DN Patel of the Delhi High Court which said that:

'Nothing is compulsory for any violator. He may say yes and compound the offence, or he may go to the court. But there's videographic evidence and the public will be benefitted as they will not be required to come to court. Nowadays, no one has time to come to the court.'

This address was followed by the inaugural address of Justice DY Chandrachud of the Supreme Court.

Justice Chandrachud started by commenting that the unprecedented pandemic has brought about the adoption of technology by courts, and now, we're focused on how this technology should be adopted.

It was further commented by Justice Chandrachud that within 10 minutes of launching the virtual courts 2.0, 95 thousand rupees have already been deposited. This shows the seamless nature of the functioning of the virtual courts.

While highlighting that now police can be better focused on its regulatory duties, Justice Chandrachud said it is due to the example set by Delhi that other States such as Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Kerala are also on the anvil of adopting the virtual courts system.

In order to further increase the use of e-governance in the judiciary, Justice Chandrachud suggested that technology can also be adopted for settling disputes under other provisions such as those pertaining to section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act.

Since not every litigant or lawyer is well versed with the technology, Justice Chandrachud informed that on Friday a webinar will be held by the Supreme Court to explain the system of e-filing.

While highlighting that it was important to frame rules for the use of video-conferencing by courts and that the Supreme Court is on its way of suggesting a country-wide uniform model, Justice Chandrachud gave following recommendations for seamless adoption of technology:

1. There should be seamless access to video-conferencing and the rules have to take into consideration the right to know of both the public and the media
2. there should be interlinking of e-libraries across the country
3. Judicial data can be opened up for research purposes and for enhancing the quality of services

Justice Chandrachud concluded his address by stating that everything depends on the cooperation of Bar and the Bench.

'I want to ensure the Bar that their needs and requirements will be addressed', Justice Chandrachud noted.

The event was then closed by the vote of thanks given by Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva of the Delhi High Court.