Online Access To Law: Delhi HC Issues Directions To Revamp ‘India Code’ Portal [Read Order]

The Delhi High Court recently issued a direction to the Ministry of Law and Justice to add more contents to the new India Code website, which is being developed by the Legislative Department of the ministry.

Officials from the Ministry of Law and National Informatics Centre made a presentation of the New India Code website to Justice Manmohan, who was hearing a writ petition relating to online access to Indian law.

After watching the presentation and hearing the parties, Justice Manmohan directed that the following elements are to be included in the new portal in the first phase:

1. All Central Acts and Subordinate Legislations passed by the Central Government, including Rules, Regulations, Notifications and Circulars, should be made available on this portal.


2. The data uploaded on the portal should be available in machine readable PDF format.


3. The navigation on this portal should enable visitors of the website to view a complete chain right from the parent Act to the subordinate Legislations passed by the Central Government under the parent Act.


4. All Central Ministries, Departments, Statutory/ Autonomous Bodies and other relevant competent authorities shall assign a Nodal Officer to deal with the creation and uploading of Legislative documents onto the portal created by NIC.


5. All such Nodal Officers shall create and upload this data in a standardized format. This format shall be in machine-readable PDFs and hyperlink friendly.


6. The portal created by NIC shall enable uploading of aforementioned data by all such Nodal Officers.


7. All such Nodal Officers shall upload this Data along with metadata as required.


8. This portal shall also enable hyperlinking between Acts, Rules, Regulations and other subordinate Legislations, as necessary.


9. This portal shall also enable uploading of Legislative documents, including Acts, Rules, Regulations and subordinate Legislations, by State Governments and relevant authorities under them.


10. This portal shall be mobile friendly.

Earlier, amicus curiae senior advocate Jayant Bhushan had submitted his suggestions. In May 2017, Justice Manmohan directed the Secretary, Legislative Department, to convene a meeting to discuss the suggestions to improve online access to Indian legislations.

Read the Order Here