“In the near future, we will have to address the structural issues affecting the judiciary, including case pendency, outdated procedures, and a culture of adjournment,” he said.
“As we celebrate this day in history, we must equally reflect on the past and look to the future,” he said, adding that the Supreme Court has strengthened the rights of citizens by diluting standards and recognizing a new set of rights. He added that it has been strengthened. such as the right to a speedy trial under Article 21 of the Constitution.
“To remain relevant as an organization, we need to acknowledge the challenges and start having the difficult conversations. First, we need to move from a culture of recess to a culture of professionalism. Second, we need to move from a culture of recess to a culture of professionalism. Third, the legal profession has become increasingly alienated from the first generation of lawyers, those with the will to work and the potential to succeed. We must provide a level playing field for men, women and others from all walks of life, and fourth, let’s start a long discussion about alternative arrangements such as vacations and flexible working hours for lawyers and judges. Whether it is possible or not,” he said.
Administratively, the Supreme Court seeks to create procedural fairness by eliminating many barriers to justice, such as unequal access to legal resources, unfamiliarity with the English language, and problems with physical access to courtrooms. He said they had been identified and eliminated.
Highlighting the various projects, Justice Chandrachud said that around 128,000 e-applications have been made since the launch of the upgraded version in May 2023.
“E-filing is available in 25 states. E-filing has recorded more than 2.9 million cases. With the tremendous support of our courts and tribunals, we have been able to quickly and virtually file during COVID-19. We were able to proceed to a hearing,” he said, adding. Post-pandemic, hybrid hearings continue to be a feature of the court, allowing Indian lawyers located in any part of the country or the world to argue before the court.
He said more than 1.3 million heritage and actual case records, amounting to about 10 billion pages, have been digitized.
Among other measures, he said the Supreme Court has enabled “future courtroom technology” in three courtrooms and other courtrooms will soon be equipped with such technology, which will allow for paperless proceedings. , said a comprehensive digital library for courts and defense attorneys will be facilitated. Art video conferencing, large video walls, smart monitors, document visualizers, and more all redefine the courtroom experience.
He said that in the future, the Supreme Court will soon move its digital data to a safe and secure sovereign cloud, which will be a major blow to the court’s IT setup. He said cloud storage will ensure privacy, integrity, high availability and secure access of the Supreme Court’s domain data.
“We are also on the verge of opening a war room equipped with technology that will enable the Supreme Court to monitor judicial data across the country in real time using information sharing, the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) and iJuris. “iJuris was launched by the Supreme Court to monitor vacancy statistics and infrastructure in local judicial bodies,” he said.
The CJI said the virtual court initiative has revolutionized access to court and online dispute resolution.
“Implemented in 20 states, the initiative received challans of Rs 4.37 billion and led to a total fine collection of Rs 502.25 million. Interestingly, according to the Government of India’s Electronic Transaction Analyzer, in 2018 E-courts have even surpassed the size of courts in Indian Railways in terms of overall electronic transactions. ”
The CJI said that while the legal profession has traditionally been an elite male profession, times have changed and women, who have traditionally been underrepresented in the legal profession, now make up 36.3% of district judicial staff.
Several states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand In the lower civil judge recruitment examination conducted in , more than 50% of the candidates selected were women. At the Supreme Court, 41 percent of this year’s nominees for law clerk-research staff hired to assist judges are women.
Prior to 2024, only 12 women had been appointed to the position of “senior advocate” in the past 74 years of the Supreme Court’s history. He said the Supreme Court last week appointed 11 women from different parts of the country as senior advocates in a single selection process.
“Our legitimacy survives by including diverse segments of the population in our institutions. Therefore, we must work harder to include different segments of society in the legal profession. For example, the representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is quite low both at the bar and on the bench,” the CJI said.