In January of this year, the district court in Kalpetta, Wayanad went fully paperless with the stated objective of having every new case filed, scrutiny conducted, hearing held, and order issued managed digitally for the first time in India. This week, the Chief Justice of India announced an initiative that would assume such a digital case management as the new modus operandi for courts across India.
The One Case One Data (OCOD) project is reported to link case information across the Supreme Court, high courts, district courts and taluka courts within a single interconnected case management system. The initiative is greatly required and recognises information as critical infrastructure for digitalisation of justice delivery.This new system would be an addition to the digital initiatives that already exist. The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) website visualises macro statistics such as the number of cases pending, institution and disposal rates, breakdowns across case types and stages updated daily across all courts. The eCourts services database holds case status information related to cases in district courts and high courts, primarily through logged metadata, accessible to litigants and advocates. What OCOD (along with the accompanying announcement for Su Sahay, a litigant-facing AI chatbot) promises is different: A judge at any level will be able to see the complete background of a case, including who various respondents were, what written submissions were made, and what evidence was presented or government records linked. These documents will be digitally retrievable across courts rather than depending purely on versions provided by advocates during appeals or received through the manual process to call for lower court records.
