Pilot Project to Integrate Police Stations and Courts

• 27 Dec 2018

A Supreme Court panel has launched a pilot project in Telangana’s Warangal district to integrate two crucial pillars of the criminal justice delivery system- the courts and police stations.

• The Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), an initiative of the apex court’s eCommittee, seeks to make live exchange of data possible between all criminal courts and police stations.
• Justice MB Lokur, heads Supreme Court’s eCommittee, and is also the chairman of ICJS.
• This project is in alignment with Digital India initiative of the Government and will boost e-governance. 
• This would help save time spent on completing paperwork and documentary evidence such as the first information reports (FIR) and charge sheets.
• Tracking court proceedings would become easier for investigating officers.
• The next phase would include extending the ICJS data sharing to other states and also expanding it to prisons, forensic facilities, the prosecution system and juvenile homes.
• The e-courts project is aimed at computerisation of district and subordinate courts across the country.
• It has reached the final stages of implementation and covered 16,755 district courts. Several electronic services such as e-summons, SMS alerts to lawyers and litigants and e-filing have been initiated under the project.
• The National Judicial Data Grid hosts a dynamic repository of over 100 million cases.

The National Judicial Data Grid

• The e-Courts National portal (ecourts.gov.in) was launched in August 2013.
• More than 2852 Districts and Taluka Court Complexes have since secured their presence on the NJDG portal.
• The NJDG is working as National data warehouse for case data including the orders/judgments for Courts across the country.
• NJDG has specifically helped India improve its ranking in World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report.