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Responding to a question on Wednesday, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju told Parliament that since the beginning of the lockdown in 2020, the Supreme Court of India by conducting 96,239 virtual hearings till July 7, 2021, had emerged as a global leader.

The Minister said that the government was implementing the e-Courts Mission Mode Project throughout the country for Information and Communication Technology enablement of the District and Subordinate courts.

A question was placed in Lower House of the Parliament by Member of Parliament, Shri Sumedhanand Saraswati asking Minister of LAW AND JUSTICE to state-

(a) the total expenditure made so far for implementing information & communication technology-based system in high courts and Supreme Court;

(b) the achievements of Supreme Court e-committee during last 16 years of its existence; and

(c) the fresh steps taken by the Government for making virtual hearing a permanent feature of judicial system?

To answer these questions, Union Law Minister further told the House that High Courts across the country have held 36,47,381 hearings and Subordinate Courts have held 67,85,877 hearings virtually till May 31.

Minister also told Parliament that since the COVID lockdown, District Courts have heard over 74 lakh cases, while High Courts have heard over 40 lakh cases through the virtual mode.

Responding to the first part of the question, the Minister highlighted that implementation of the information & communication technology-based system has been done throughout the Judicial System.

Minister told that seven platforms had been created for disseminating real-time information on case status, cause list, judgments etc. to lawyers and litigants viz. a multilingual and disabled-friendly e-Courts Portal, e-Courts Mobile App and JustIS App for judges, Automated emails, SMS Push and Pull Service, Judicial Service Centres and Information Kiosks.

Also, for effective use of the newly introduced system, the Minister informed that 30,781 Advocates and Advocate Clerks and 4006 advocate master trainers were trained by the e-Committee in coordination with the respective State Judicial Academies, as of 28 May 2021.

Minister also told Parliament that since the COVID lockdown, District Courts have heard over 74 lakh cases, while High Courts have heard over 40 lakh cases through the virtual mode.

Responding to the inquiry about the expenditure, the Minister added,

“The total expenditure during e-Courts Project Phase- I was Rs. 639.41 crores. During Phase-II of e-Courts Project, as against total outlay of Rs. 1670 crore, the total expenditure so far has been Rs. 1582.20 crores out of which a sum of Rs. 1150.56 crore has been released to the High Courts till 31st May 2021.”

Against another query, whether open physical courts will operate along with virtual hearings in a hybrid model, the Minister said, this was an administrative matter that fell within the judiciary's purview and domain.

The House was also told that 12 Virtual Courts in nine States had been operationalized to handle traffic challan cases. Minister further added that more than 72 lakh cases had been handled by 12 virtual courts and online fines of Rs. 159 Crore had been realized till 8 July 2021.

Minister added that the Delhi High Court had set up 34 Digital Courts dealing with Negotiable Instruments Act cases.

It was further added that Video Conference (VC) facilities had been enabled between 3240 court complexes and corresponding 1272 jails.