“Justice Delayed is Justice Denied“- with this in mind, the district administration decided to embark on an e- governance exercise by utilizing the benefits of ICT, at the Revenue courts, Ranchi (Jharkhand). To deliver accurate and timely justice, the use of ICT can no longer be kept in abeyance in the crucial area of revenue administration.

With the aim of bringing digital transformation at the 'District Revenue Courts', NIC Jharkhand, developed, a web based G2C application software 'e- Rajaswa Nayayalay', to facilitate speedy justice to the masses at the lowest level i.e. the Revenue courts, where mainly land related cases are filed.

Home page of 'e- Rajaswa Nayayalay'

Excerpts of the letter from Dr. Sunil Kumar Singh, JAS, Addl. Collector, Ranchi

“ e-Rajaswa Nayayalaya (Revenue Case Monitoring System) software developed by NIC, has been of great help to the district administration with respect to quick disposal of pending as well as current cases at various revenue courts. The net availability of the software will also benefit the common citizens in the far flung areas, for knowing their case status, decision, etc. The feature providing judgment uploads will also be useful to the advocates alike. I wish that NIC should roll out the software in all the districts of the state. I am happy to know that the software is going to feature in the informatics magazine, which provides thought provoking ideas & IT news, especially from the administrative and e-governance point of view.

T h e w e b i n t e r f a c e http://jhr.nic.in/casestatus provides both government and citizen interface. The government interface facilitates entry & updation of Revenue cases, Cause List preparation, Uploading of Orders etc where as the citizen interface has provisions for displaying the case status, cause list and judgment downloading.

The objective of the software on one hand is to provide an interface through which citizens including their advocates can know the status of their cases pending at various District Revenue Officers court, like Deputy Commissioner (DC), Additional Collector (AC) and Land Reforms Deputy Collector (LRDC), Sub divisional Officer (SDO) & Circle Officer (CO), download orders and view the cause list while on the other it facilitates the Revenue Officials for online entry of day to day case proceedings, upload court orders & prepare the cause list.

Development Platform

The software has been hosted on state of the art Data Centre of NIC. The development has been done on windows environment with ASP.Net as the front end and SQL Server database as its backend.

Prashant Belwariar InformaticsRegional Editor prashant.b@nic.in

Features and Processes The government interface is password protected and requires that the user enter his or her User id and password. The 'Administrator' can add 'New user' as well as change password of any user. The existing users can also change their own password. The provision for master entry of courts, case nature and status etc. are also provided at the administrator level.

The major attributes of a case like court name, case nature, petitioner, respondent, case status, next date & fixed for

Entry Module of the software

Court Records) for the convenience of advocates and the parties concerned. The cause lists are generated with the selection of the appropriate date. The date wise cause list can be prepared in the desired order before exporting it to the pdf format, after which it can be printed. The court wise order files can be uploaded by selecting the case number, nature and year.

The citizens have the facility to view the status of their case on the basis of petitioner name, respondent name, case nature or by giving their case number. The same facility is available while viewing the orders passed by different courts. The uploaded pdf file provides a link and takes the viewer to the appropriate file. The necessary navigation button is provided for quick viewing. The date wise cause list can be viewed by selecting the court name and the date. All the cases appear in the grid for the selected date.

Status of Cases

Adjourned cases are fixed for next hearing date. Appeal cases may be Allowed or Disallowed where as Appeal Allowed & Remand pertains to shifting to lower court on some specific matter for fresh hearing. Any disobey of order by the petitioner over a period of time or for any other unforeseen reason, may lead the case to be Dismissed for Default. The cases like SAR, Mutation revision, Pre emption Appeal etc. can be Transferred from the DC court to the AC court for administrative reasons.

Nature of Cases Mutation cases are filed before CO court while its appeal, are filed before LRDC court. Appeal related to Pre-emption, Permission, Jamabandi, Misc. Revenue & Rent Fixation are filed before the LRDC court. The decision of LRDC court can be appealed before the court of AC or DC. Case related to SAR Appeal (Schedule Area Regulation Act - 1969) can be filed before LRDC, SDO or the designated SAR Officer while its appeal is filed before the court of AC or DC.

The 'e-Rajaswa Nayayalay' software has opened up new doors of e-governance with forward integration with the 'Board of Revenue' of the state, created by the Board of Revenue Act. The Member's Court at the Board, an apex executive / quasi judicial court of the state, is empowered to hear appeals related to excise revenue, service matters, pollution tribunal, Land ceiling etc or can take decisions on all revenue matters affecting the state.

For Further Information Contact: Shahid Ahmad State Informatics Officer sio-jhr@nic.in Deepak Kumar District Informatics Officer, Ranchi jhrran@nic.in