New Delhi: As 712 courts in the State have been covered under e- Courts project, where proceedings are being conducted via video conferencing (VC), and case records are being digitized to facilitate efficient judicial process, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said today.
While replying to a query by BJD Rajya Sabha MP Subhasish Khuntia, the Union Minister said that Case Information System (CIS) software has been implemented in these 712 courts, as a result, the stakeholders are able to view the status of their cases 24×7. e-filing and e-payment have been enabled for all these courts.
Out of 712 courts, 341 courts in the district judiciary have been digitized across the State. All the courtrooms, including those in High Courts, district courts and taluka courts in the State of Odisha have been provided with ICT hardware, such as, desktop computers, all-in-one PCs, cameras and speaker-microphone systems etc. for virtual hearing, he said.
Similarly, all the courts in rural and remote areas of the State are being covered under the e-Courts Project and are continuously upgraded with necessary ICT infrastructure. Essential equipments are provided to enable computerization, digitization and video conferencing-based proceedings and to access e-Courts, Meghwal stated.
So far, 6,876 advocates and 494 litigants (party-in-person) have been registered under the e-filing portal and 76,728 cases have been e-filed, he said.
Meghwal said 2,27,99,629 documents in new cases and 2,89,93,779 documents in existing cases have been e-filed through e-filing portal. Besides, 154 court complexes have been provided with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) connectivity and 117e-SewaKendras have been established across the State, he informed.
Similarly, all the criminal courts have been integrated under the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS). As on date, 15,18,906 FIRs and 8,27,556 chargesheets have been consumed by different courts under ICJS.
He said 341 courts in the district judiciary and 18 courts in the High Court are functioning paperless. All court proceedings of 4 benches in the High Court are being live streamed for being viewed by the general public and all the district court websites have been migrated to Secure, Scalable and Sugamya Website as a Service (S3WaaS) platform.
National Service and Tracking of Electronic Processes (NSTEP) has been implemented in the district courts of Odisha. As many 869 mobile phones distributed under the e-Courts project for electronic service of summons.
Virtual courts have been established for traffic challan cases arising in the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Commissionerate area, on a pilot basis. Further, substantial progress has been made in the field of digitization both in the High Court and district courts.
A total of 4,28,23,709 pages in the High Court and 10,97,46,629 pages in the district courts have been digitized as on December 31, 2024.