Indian Judiciary - Before and After Digitalization!

Justice delayed is justice denied! But the Indian Judiciary is tormented with perpetual litigation and vast legal battles. Data gives a statistics of 2,81,25,066 ( Two Crore Eighty One Lakh Twenty Five Thousand Sixty Six ) civil and criminal cases as pending during the period of 2015-2016. 5,000 more judicial officers are currently needed to fix this situation. The state courts are suffering immensely as the judges have to overwork, court staff is overburdened with ample of work, the courts are too little to occupy enough people and most importantly an unending wait for justice is pending. But the growth of the human being so far has made the era evolved with the most crucial thing mankind has invented; TECHNOLOGY! With the proliferation of automated legal tools, we are witnessing new methodologies that reduce or eliminate tedious legal tasks. Going digital seems to be the only solution to fix the logjam and dissolve all the pending stats.

Technology will drive the speedy disposal of cases and helping the common man to access justice at ease. Below mentioned are some methods legal fraternity can adapt for quick justice.

• Online Legal Consultation: The government has recently started “Tele-Law” services across 1000 common services centers in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to provide free legal consultation.
• Filing a complaint within no time: Filing a complaint has never been this easy. It’s as easy as booking a movie ticket. A digitalized manner of registering complaints and creating accountability is the need of the hour. Filing an FIR, a civil case, an RTI application, consumer grievance, application for document verification, licensing, etc not only gives open access to the victim but also increases accountability. Courts are now providing regular case status updates through their web portals.
• Case status can be viewed online transparently: Once the case is filed, one can check the status of the case, date of next hearing, history of the orders passed by the court and other particularities online. There’s no need of visiting the courts again and again to know the statuses.
• Social Media based facts are now considered as legal evidences in the court: The system is changed to the extent that conviction for an offense is not completely based upon culprit’s statements and traditional evidence like circumstantial clues, the weapon used in the crime, eye witnesses etc. Courts now consider electronic evidence as an acceptable form of legal evidence for the justice to be unbiased.
• WhatsApp has been approved as an ethical platform to convey the messages: The Delhi High Court used the technology based social media websites WhatsApp, SMS, and email to serve summons in judicial proceedings in the matter of Tata Sons v/s John Doe(s) and Ors.

The technology will get better and better each day with the growing population and growing minds!