Plan to digitise judicial data fails to take off

NEW DELHI: Law minister Sadananda Gowda last year wrote to all 24 chief justices of high courts to compile annual report listing the performance of their courts — pendency of cases, disposal rates etc — and put the same on their websites for public scrutiny.

However, six months after the matter was discussed at the last advisory council meeting of the national mission for justice delivery and legal reforms, chaired by the law minister in July 2015, only eight chief justices have shown interest and responded to the law minister.

Barring the HCs of Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madras, Sikkim and Tripura, none has responded positively to the Centre’s request to make judicial statistics available on the website of the respective HC.

The government has been struggling to obtain proper judicial data from high courts. “The availability of reliable and accurate data is a pre-requisite for informed policy-making,” the law ministry has said.

The HCs need to supervise the district courts within their respective jurisdiction with database preparation. Additionally, they need to take the responsibility of gathering and recording judicial data relating to all matters being heard in the HC.

At present, quarterly statistics on the total number of civil and criminal cases pending before the SC, HCs and district and subordinate courts are made available by the SC on its website. In addition, the e-committee of the SC has launched the National Judicial Data Grid ( NJDG), which provides data on cases pending in district courts across the country.

But the Centre wants each HC to take responsibility for gathering and recording judicial data relating to all matters being heard by them and the data should be integrated with the NJDG which so far provides only subordinate court data.

The emphasis is on information not only on the aggregate number of pending cases, but more granular information on age and category-wise pendency of cases, the number of adjournments granted on an average in civil and criminal cases and trials of cases held up on account of stay orders granted by superior courts.

The government is in favour of the HCs being on the national data grid where it can analyse causes of delay in justice delivery and analyse other issues that could help in policy formulation.