AI Assisted Judgement Translations, Automatic Electronic Service And More: Bombay High Court Gets Tech Upgrade

The Bombay High Court has taken a slew of decisions leading to digital upgradation of the High Court’s processes and functioning, including developing its own softwares to digitize court records and setting up an “AI Assisted Legal Translation Advisory Committee” to translate important Supreme Court and High Court judgements in Marathi using AI.

The announcements in the form of a series of circulars issued by the Bombay High Court are as follows:

1. 'Choropleth' MAPS – Coloured maps reflecting district wise data from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG). NJDG is a repository of all kinds of statistical data relating to institution, pendency and disposal of cases in District and Taluka Courts in Maharashtra. Choropleth maps are generated from this data to show statistical distribution trends in a colour-graded visual manner.

“These Maps help the High Court administration to rapidly take data-driven policy decisions,” the circular states.

2. The High Court has independently developed its own software (BHC Ingestion, BHC Interact & BHC Connect) for digitizing case records. The software uses the latest D-space 7.0 repository.

'BHC Interact' - Portal for staff, lawyers and judges to access files.

'BHC Connect' - Allows District and Taluka Courts to send digitized case records to the High Court. The High Court can directly fetch or request the Record and Proceedings (R&P), or this can be sent to the High Court from the districts or talukas. The retrieved record is automatically linked with High Court case for viewing by High Court judges. This is a step towards eliminating the need to replicate the entire record at the district and taluka for the High Court.

"BHC Connect' digitally links the case records of the district and taluka courts with the High Court.

3. Neutral Citations, Three in One Facility Unique to the Bombay High Court – A Neutral Citation is a unique, permanent identifying code to every judgement and final order passed by the High Court. The Bombay High Court rolled out Neutral Citations for its Judgments and final orders in March 2023, soon after the SC launched this project earlier this year.

In addition to these citations the court features both QR Codes and digital signatures. QR codes printed on the top of any judgement allows a user to directly access the authenticated judgment or order with a simple QR Code scan available on every mobile device/iPad.

4. Bombay High Court implements Artificial Intelligence Assisted Translation Facility - Bombay High Court has constituted an "Al Assisted Legal Translation Advisory Committee" under the directions of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud.

The main object of the project is to translate relevant Judgements of the Supreme Court and High Court into Marathi with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabling greater access to justice, spreading legal awareness, fostering legal literacy, and for general convenience and understanding of all citizens.

These judgements are available under the caption ‘Nivdak Nirnay’. These translated judgements can be shared with Government Departments and Legal Services Authorities.

“The Supreme Court of India has developed an application called SUVAS. This is a machine-assisted translation tool trained by Artificial Intelligence. This tool is especially designed for the judicial domain. At present, it can translate English judicial documents, orders and judgments into nine vernacular languages scripts and vice versa.”

So far 114 such judgements have been translated by the Bombay High Court.

5. Automatic Electronic Service - Bombay High Court has become the first and the only High Court to include country-wide data of all institutional litigants with details of over 40,500 entities. For example, if a new case is filed in Maharashtra, the respondent body anywhere in the country can automatically be notified about the filing. Also, once the respondent body is known, the nearest court can be located, with the associated bailiff.