Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) Project

The Chief Justice of India (CJI), DY Chandrachud announced the Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) Project. It provides access to about 34000 judgments to lawyers, media, law students, and the common public.

What is Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) Project?

• e-SCR is an Initiative to provide a digital version of the Supreme Court’s judgments in a manner as reported in the official Supreme Court reports.
• With the help of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the Supreme Court of India has developed a search engine. e-SCR Project will provide flexible search techniques in the e-SCR database like free text search, search within a search, case year, case type, judgment search, bench strength search option, etc.
• It will cover the entire gamut of SC’s judgments from its inception in 1950 to 2017 and also preserve the same in digitized soft copy format.
• It will be accessible on Supreme Court’s website, National Judicial Data Grid’s Portal (NJDG), and mobile application.

Significance of Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) Project

• e-SCR is an attempt to a step forward in the direction of digitization of the Indian Judiciary.
• It also helps to realize the vision of bringing positive change for the benefit of all the stakeholders of the judiciary.

National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG)

• It is an online platform developed under the e-Courts project.
• NJDG is a database of judgments, orders, and case details of District & Subordinate Courts and High Courts.
• Various benefits of NJDG:
  • works as a monitoring tool to identify, manage and reduce the pendency of cases,
  • provides timely inputs for making policy decisions,
  • helps in monitoring court performance.

e-Court Mission Mode Project

• It is a pan-India project, conceptualized under “National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Indian Judiciary“.
• It provides designated services to litigants, lawyers, and the judiciary through the universal computerization of district and subordinate courts across the country.
• Various e-initiatives launched under the e-Court project:
  • ICJS: Inter-operable Criminal Justice System to enable the electronic exchange of data in the courts.
  • Digital Signature Certificate: provided to Judicial Officers for ensuring the authenticity of uploaded judgments.