Lucknow: An All India conference on scanning and digitization was inaugurated at the Centre for Information Technology, High Court of Judicature at Allahabad on 6th of August, 2016
The conference was held to give effect to the resolution of the Chief Justices Conference held in April 2016 wherein it was resolved that a conference on ‘Scanning and Digitization of Judicial Records’ be organized by the Allahabad High Court for the representatives of the Computerization Committees of different High Courts in the counrty and their technical personnel, for providing a platform for exchange of views, knowledge sharing and for sharing of best practices adopted by all the High Courts for digitization of court records.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by Justice Madan B Lokur, Judge Supreme Court and Chairperson of the e-committee of the Supreme Court of India, Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale, Chief Justice of High Court of Meghalaya, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, and the Chairpersons/Members of the Digitization/Computerization Committees of different High Courts in the country along with their technical personnel.
The ceremony was also attended by Judges from Allahabad High Court, representatives from Prime Minister’s office, Joint Secretary, Department of Justice, Government of India, Chief Secretary of Government of Uttar Pradesh, Principal Secretary IT & Electronics department, Government of Uttar Pradesh, Principal Secretary (LR), Government of Uttar Pradesh, Advocate General of Uttar Pradesh and Registrar Generals of Allahabad High Court and High Court of Jharkhand.
The guests were welcomed by Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale and the Digitization Committee of the High Court, headed by Justice Dilip Gupta who is the chairman of the committee.
The ceremony began with the lighting of the lamp followed by welcome speech from the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale which was followed by opening remarks from the Chairman of Digitization Committee, Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Gupta.
Two booklets were also released on the occasion, one on Digitization workflow depicting the process adopted for Digitization by Allahabad High Court and the other on the newly renovated/remodeled State-of-the-art building of Centre for Information Technology, which shall house the Data Centre of the High Court at Allahabad.
The Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale presented a memento to Justice Madan B Lokur, Judge Supreme Court as a token of remembrance. Chairman Digitization Committee, Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Gupta also presented a memento to Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale.
In his welcome speech, the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale, highlighted some of the commendable works done by Justice Madan B Lokur in bringing quicker ways of justice delivery by setting up e-courts, digitizing case files, computerization of courts and video conferencing between jails and courts. The Chief Justice during his speech, also dwelled upon one of the major challenge of docket explosion being faced by Judiciary, which is leading to space constraint. His Lordship opined that the digitization would save the trouble of going through the hard copies of records, which is often a tedious and long drawn process. The Chief Justice further said that the courts in the country have been gradually adapting to change with reliance on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for making the justice delivery system faster and easier.
In his opening remarks, Chairman of the Digitization Committee of Allahabad High Court, Justice Dilip Gupta talked about the state of the art building that has come up in the vicinity of the High Court for the purposes of Digitization and for housing the Data Centre of the High Court. Highlighting the background of how it all started, Justice Dilip Gupta informed that the then Chief Justice of the High Court, Dr. Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud conceptualized a project to digitize approximately one crore decided case files of the High Court in one year. This was considered necessary because not only space in the Court building was required to keep large office files but it was becoming extremely difficult to trace out these files. At a modest average of about 50 pages in each weeded file, it is expected that 50 crores pages would need to be scanned and digitized in one year. This would mean that about 35000 weeded files would have to be made available each day. It was not possible to undertake this gigantic process in-house and so a decision was taken to take the service of an expert agency specialising in this field. Justice Dilip Gupta also made a reference of two applications of software sub processes i.e. of Document Tracking System and the other of Document Management Solution, which form an intrinsic part of the Digitization process. Justice Dilip Gupta also thanked the State Government for extending all the necessary support in setting up of the Centre for Information Technology and really appreciated the part played by the State Government.
Speaking on the Occasion, Justice Madan B Lokur, Judge Supreme Court and Chairperson of the e-committee of the Supreme Court of India commended the efforts being put in by Allahabad High Court to digitize its court records and highlighted the fact that the digitization is just one step in computerization. He had put in a word of caution for all the High Courts who have embarked upon digitization projects that the records of historical, cultural and religious importance need to be segregated and preserved for posterity. Justice Lokur highlighted on how the focus of e-committee of the Supreme Court shifted from working out the solutions from the perspective of Judges on justice delivery system to perspective of Litigants and Lawyers on justice delivery system, so that they are able to extract the maximum information related to their case from such systems.
Justice Lokur also talked about the savings in costs that are resulting from providing video conferencing facility between courts and jails. He also highlighted on the need for regular updation of case related data and lauded the efforts of judiciary in Uttar Pradesh in terms of progression it has shown in reducing the figure of undated cases from 80% couple of months back to 2.81% as on 31st July, 2016.
The Ceremony ended with a deliverance from the Chief Secretary of the state who graced the occasion and committed full support of the State Government to the Judiciary for any e-governance initiative.
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