Govt Implementing E-Courts Project Phase III With Rs 7,210-Cr Outlay Over 4 Years: Mos Meghwal

(MENAFN- KNN India) New Delhi, Dec 12 (KNN) To advance the digital transformation of India's judicial system, the Government is implementing e-Courts Project Phase III, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

The project, with an outlay of Rs 7,210 crore over four years, aims to enhance access to justice by making courts more efficient, transparent, and digitally enabled.

According to the Law & Justice Ministry, expenditure under the project reached Rs 768.25 crore in 2023–24, Rs 1,029.11 crore in 2024–25, and Rs 907.97 crore released so far in 2025–26.

Digital and Paperless Courts

Phase III focuses on transforming courts into digital and paperless institutions by digitising both legacy and current case records, expanding video-conferencing infrastructure to all courts and jails, and extending online courts beyond traffic violations.

The project also includes universal expansion of e-Sewa Kendras, creation of a cloud-based repository for digital court data, and deployment of technologies such as artificial intelligence and optical character recognition for case analysis and forecasting.

The Digital Courts 2.1 platform, currently under pilot testing, allows judges electronic access to all case-related documents and evidence, marking a major shift towards paperless court functioning.

Key Achievements Reported

The Ministry reported significant progress under Phase III of the e-Courts initiative.

Nearly all court complexes-99.5 per cent-are now connected through a Wide Area Network with bandwidth ranging from 10 to 100 Mbps.

Digital services have expanded substantially, with courts issuing lakhs of SMS and emails daily and the e-Courts portal receiving 35 lakh hits each day.

Virtual Courts have become an important enforcement tool, processing 8.96 crore challans, disposing of 7.84 crore of them, and collecting fines totalling Rs 895.59 crore.

E-filing services have expanded to 5,187 court establishments, facilitating over 92 lakh electronic case filings.

Digital payments for court fees and fines have crossed 49.2 lakh and 4.8 lakh transactions, respectively.

To support litigants, 1,987 e-Sewa Kendras are operational across the country. Under the NSTEP system, 6.21 crore electronic processes have been issued, with 1.61 crore successfully delivered.

Access to judicial information has also improved, with 1.69 crore judgments available on the Judgment Search Portal and 730 district court websites hosted on the S3WaaS platform.

Challenges

Despite significant advances, the Ministry acknowledged challenges including disparities in digital infrastructure across jurisdictions, the scale of digitising legacy records, the need for greater digital literacy among court stakeholders, and increasing data-security demands.

(KNN Bureau)

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