“Lawyers all around the nation can access this service for free. Juniors under 18 are exempt from payment. A facility for elastic search exists. In a few weeks, we will enhance the search engine by adding the respected judgments that have been followed ” CJI stated.

The Chief Justice of India (CJI), who shared the bench with Justice P S Narasimha, greeted attorneys on a happy first day of the new year before outlining the e-SCR programs.

Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud on Monday announced the start of the electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) initiative. This would give attorneys, law students, and the general public free access to roughly 34,000 judgments as another step toward digitization.

CJI announces the beginning of the electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) program to make judgments accessible.. Senior Lawyers Near me

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) said before the beginning of judicial proceedings on the first working day of 2023 that these judgments will be accessible on the website of the supreme court, its mobile app, and on the judgment portal of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

He claimed that beginning right away, all judgments rendered up until January 1, 2023, would be made available.

Online judgments within 24 hours

“I also head-noted a deadline of February 15 for 2022 judgments. All decisions will be posted online within 24 hours starting today. The National Judicial Data Grid and the mobile app we recently established will both have access to the information. approximately 34,000 judgments, “CJI stated.

“Neutral citations are another addition. It already exists in Delhi and Kerala High Court “explained Chandrachud. He said that a team made up of three judges — Justices Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi High Court, Raja Vijayaraghavan of the Kerala High Court, and Justice Suraj Govindraj of the Karnataka High Court — has been established to work on the “neutral citations” procedure.

In court, lawyers use legal publications, such as “Supreme Court Reports,” to cite reported judgments that support their arguments. Moreover, The Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) project aims to publish the decisions of the supreme court in digital form, exactly as they appear in the official legal report known as “Supreme Court Reports.”

Search engine developed by the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court said in a statement that a team made up of staff members from the Judges’ Library and Editorial Section worked tirelessly and split 34,013 judgments in just 15 days to create a database suitable for meeting the needs of the search engine developed by the Supreme Court with the NIC, Pune.

“Supreme Court Reports (SCR) from the year 1950 to 2017 were digitized and scanned, and the same were preserved in digitized soft copy in the format of PDF (Portable Document Format), assisted the Registry in creating a digital repository in the Supreme Court’s reported judgments in soft form,” the Apex court had said.

According to the statement, “This is a project that, in essence, endeavors to take a step forward towards fulfilling the objective of digitization of Indian Judiciary and underlines the vision to bring in a positive change for the benefit of all the stakeholders of justice, in particular litigants and members of the Bar as well as the High Courts, National Law University, Judicial Academies, etc.”

The National Informatics Center helped the Supreme Court create a search engine that uses elastic search technology in the e-SCR database and offers options for free text search, search within a search, case type and case year search, judge search, year and volume search, and bench strength search, according to the statement.