With the goal of timely yet qualitative justice to the citizens at grass root level, in 2005, the Supreme Court of India decided to bring all the courts into the National data grid. With a vision of technological advancement in the administration of Justice Delivery System and uniformity in procedure and proceedings, the e-Committee was set up to explore possible way of rebuilding the Indian Judiciary with the aid of Information and Communication Technology, and thus began the journey of implementing the objectives of e-Court Mission Mode Project.
COMPUTERIZATION IN DISTRICT JUDICIARY It began in a phase-wise manner in 1996-97 with an in-house software application developed by NIC-High Court of Gujarat in FoxBASE running on SCO UnixWare (1.1) and connected to dumb clients through Line Terminal Server with Gujarati ISFOC Character support. The application was successfully running at all 24 Appellate Side Courts as well as City Courts of Ahmedabad.
Embracing Open Source Technology Over a period of time, there was a necessity to upgrade the existing Hardware as well as application Software.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) was adopted in Computerization of District Judiciary. Linux based clients with Open Office as Office Application Suite was provided to clients. The main features of new Development Platform are - Developed on Open Source: All applications were developed on LAMP Stack (Linux as server OS, Apache as web server, MySQL as Database and PHP as programming language).
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): TCO reduced considerably due to adaptation of FOSS, as costs towards Office Suite and Antivirus Solution were saved.
Characteristics of Court Case Information System (CCIS) Unique Case Code: A unique 15 digit case code, across all the districts, is assigned to all the cases. This is the key used by all the available channels of case inquiry. Common Masters: In order to bring the Gujarat Judiciary under single grid, standard templates are used for cases, advocates, Judges, Police stations, etc., which helps in retrieval and synchronization, and is also manageable. Advocate Identification: Registration Code, assigned and periodically sourced by the Bar Council of Gujarat, is used for identifying an advocate, helping to check advocate credentials with Registration Number provided in Vakalatnama. Three level classification code is used for classification of cases. Each provision of law has been given 3 Level Classification Code, by assigning ACT, CHAPTER and SECTION Codes in respective levels. Role and time based user permission Application supports full title entry in English and Gujarati language. Legacy Data Entry: There is a provision to enter Backlog cases. Legal Heirs: Scope for adding multiple generations of legal heirs in a case by maintaining its chronological order. Linking of cases is possible. Same is reflected in Court/Advocate Boards. Provisions for copying previously entered data and creating & managing groups are provided, which minimizes clerical works in case of bulk filing. Multiple Advocates: A party can have multiple advocates for which provision have been made available. Caveat matching either by party name or by Lower court details. Case Transfer: Single as well as Bulk case transfer is possible. Transfer between different establishments is also possible, if the establishments are running in the same system. Daily Case Proceedings: Provision to enter daily proceedings viz., adjournments, Advocate present, interim orders etc., Notice Generation: Auto generation of various types of Notice, Summons and Warrant can be made. Board Generation: Judge-wise/advocate-wise boards are generated, by showing Names of all advocates and litigants in the boards. Classified boards can also be generated with police station details. Any Board Any Time: Can generate any board of any future date any time. Software for creating and maintaining history of orders/judgements. Predefined templates, both in English and Gujarati, for entering order/judgements helping users to enter only order portion. Online Inquiry Counter Web Interface: There are two different types of interfaces - one for uploading data of a particular establishment and another for public to search and view uploaded data. Case Status Search: is facilitated by name of litigant or advocate and case number. Decision support system is being planned for all which won't require case number to be typed every time to see the status. Backlog data entry: There is a sub-system to work as standalone data entry module where server infrastructure is not ready. Here all live cases of a court can be entered, from which ad-hoc reports can be generated. Established routines to import data to main system are also available. Personal computer with printer and legal databases viz. AIR, GLR, and GLH has been provided to all District Courts and Family Courts.
IMPLEMENTATION The software implementation started at various levels, viz.
Level-1: Migration of data from Legacy version (FoxBASE) to CCIS Version (2.0) Level-2: Migration of data from CCIS Version (1.0) to Version (2.0) Level-3: Migration of data from standalone backlog data entry module to Version (2.0) Level-4: Migration of data from MS Access to CCIS Version (2.0)
Now, under E-Courts Mission Mode Project, CCIS (Ver. 2.0) has been rolled out successfully in all the 45 Appellate Side Courts and 114 taluka courts.
ROAD MAP AHEAD Online Judgements/orders and statistical reports regarding filing, disposal and pendency of cases Case inquiry through KIOSK Single SMS Key Word to know case status Display of Ongoing Case Status Electronic issuance of Notice/process using digital signature Multipoint Video Conferencing