BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court will shortly be putting on the Internet its judgments.

As of now, only the Supreme Court and a few High Courts are putting their judgments on the Net.

The "Net" initiative is among the many computer savvy solutions that the court wishes to adopt to ensure expeditious disposal of cases, bring in more transparency, simplify the court rules and procedures and make them more people friendly.

High Court judge and chairman of the Project Monitoring Committee (Computers) S.R. Bannurmath says that once the server of the High Court is upgraded and its capacity increased, the judgments of the court will be put on the Net.

Initially, only reported judgments will be available on the Net. It will later be extended to cover all other judgments.

Once the judgments are put on the Net, it will become easy for advocates and litigants to look for judgments similar to their cases and apply for certified copies. They could use them to buttress their cases or points of view.

Judgment copies

Apart from this, the High Court is also drawing up a plan to make available copies of judgments at the click of a button. However, these judgments initially will not be certified copies as the computer wing of the High Court is still working on the modalities of digital signatures.

This system will enable even advocates, litigants and those interested in the law to obtain copies by merely pressing a button. It will thus spare the advocates and litigants the agonising wait for a certified copy.

Another plan is to link the office of the Advocate-General on the High Court premises with the Law Department to enable faster movement of files. As of now, the Government is one of the biggest litigants and thousands of cases, civil, criminal and miscellaneous, are filed every year. Hundreds of cases are dismissed for delay and others for non-compliance of court orders or objections. Many of the problems could be ironed out if the "E-link" between the High Court and the Government comes through.

Mr. Bannurmath says all the wings of the High Court will eventually be computerised. He says the filing counter has already been computerised, and all papers relating to a fresh case-affidavits or counter affidavit, statement of objections, vakalathnama, interlocutory applications, caveats and even memos are entered in the Registry only after they pass through the computerised filing counters.

The cause list section, board branch, where the list of cases for the next day's hearing is generated is computerised too.

It is also published on the Internet of the High Court website karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in.

Every court hall has a thin client installed under local area network (LAN) which enables a court officer of each court to update the progress of each case. Facilities for transcription of urgent orders and judgments can also be taken in the judges' chambers.

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