E-Courts in India is a much needed initiative. It has, however, always remained an unfulfilled dream. The reason being that there is a dearth of Techno-Legal expertise in India and e-courts cannot be established in India till we have that expertise.In a welcome step, the Delhi High Court has decided to establish the first e-court of India. The same would be operational by December 8, 2009 in the court of Justice S Ravindra Bhat.
It intends to provide SMS alerts about court hearings to advocates and litigants, summons sent through emails, e-stamps instead of stamp paper, recording of evidence through video-conferencing, virtual tour of court premises, etc.
Being in the initial phase, other crucial aspects of e-courts would be taken up in the due course of time.
Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law and the leading Techno-Legal Expert of India has welcomed this step of Delhi High Court. He maintains that this was the most needed action on the part of Indian Judiciary to bring speedier justice at the doorsteps of the litigants.
He, however, said that establishment of e-court would require tremendous domain specific techno-legal expertise and in the absence of the same e-courts project is bound to fail.
Only time would tell whether this initiative of Delhi High Court would ultimately succeed or it would prove to be just another press release without actual e-court capabilities.
The moment e-filing, presentation, contest and adjudication of the cases would start, India would surely be capable of establishing e-courts. In the absence of these capabilities, we have to wait for few more years to get speedier justice in India.
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