Supreme Court judge B Lokur calls for e-courts to deliver quicker justice

DEHRADUN: Citing high pendency of cases across the country as a big challenge, Supreme Court judge Justice B Lokur batted for setting up of e-courts and said it is high time the obsolete and outdated systems are done away with.

Advocating easy access to justice, Lokur said that quicker ways of justice delivery should be brought in by setting up e-courts, digitising cases, computerisation of courts and video conferencing between jails and courts.

"There are more than 3 crore pending cases in district courts, 44 lakh in High Courts and 63,000 in the Supreme Court," Lokur said during an interactive session with 70 law interns from law schools and universities across the world, yesterday.

Justice Lokur said in a country like India that has a large number of IT professionals passing out every year, it is unfortunate that court cases drag on for decades and "justice is often not done or inordinately delayed".

Underlining the importance of e-courts, Lokur said that the concept is beneficial for all stakeholders as in this system, recording of the entire case proceedings, including depositions of the witnesses is through electronic mode which can be accessed at any point of time as and when required.

He also highlighted that the process would save the trouble of going through the hard copy of records, "which is often a tedious and long drawn out process".