5 times high courts in India brought justice system closer to public

Over the years, the Kerala High Court has taken various steps to bridge the distance between the courtroom and the common man.

In 2023, the Kerala High Court published its judgments in Malayalam. With this, it became the first high court in the country to publish judgments in a regional language. Since then, different High Courts have published judgments in regional languages.

Orissa High Court

The Orissa High Court has taken several initiatives to ensure enhanced access of the legal system to the public. This includes digitisation of court proceedings and services.

The Orissa High Court introduced various e-initiatives like PIL Portal. The PIL portal allows citizens to know about the crucial PILs filed before the High Court. The portal includes case descriptions, orders, and links to livestreams of hearings, which helps the public and lawyers stay informed, avoid filing duplicate petitions, and conduct research.

An e-filing system was also launched towards ensuring accessibility of the legal justice system. e-Filing system is a complete end to end solution developed for online filing of plaints, written statements, replies and various applications related to cases. Both Civil and Criminal cases can be filed before any High Court or District Court of the country. It is designed in Bilingual (English and local language) to reach a wider group covering advocates/litigants.

Gujarat High Court

In 2020, the Gujarat High Court started live streaming its court proceedings on Youtube. This was a major initiative of bringing courtrooms to every device. It became the first high court in India to live stream its proceedings on Youtube.

The first day of live streaming saw 1,500 viewers flock to the YouTube channel. Currently, the Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Patna High Courts live stream their proceedings on Youtube. Broadcasting live court proceedings is a step in the direction of transparency and greater access to the justice system to the public.

Delhi High Court

To allow access to various services of the court, the Delhi High Court launched its mobile app this year. This move of the court was aimed at improving public access to judicial services.

The app seeks to improve the accessibility of court services for judges, lawyers, litigants, and the public. The app is available for download on Android and iOS devices. It provides a smooth user access to e-services of the court such as case status updates, cause lists, and e-filing.

According to the Delhi High Court’s website, the Web Accessibility Compliant Cause List enables blind lawyers, litigants and the general public the “seamless utilisation” of various accessibility text-to-speech softwares to navigate through its causelist.

Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court has also taken various measures to enhance accessibility to legal proceedings. According to a circular issued in 2023 by the registrar general of the high court, these include implementing QR codes in judgments and orders and using AI for translating judgments into regional languages. QR codes allow a user to directly access an authenticated judgment or order with a QR code scan available on a mobile phone or iPad.

Almost a decade ago, the high court began digitising documents, legal books and journals in its library. The Bombay High Court library serves as a mine of legal information and provides a range of reading materials for seekers of legal knowledge.

The initiative sees all the reading material being digitised and uploaded on the Bombay High Court website. A click on the e-library tab on the official website of the High Court takes you to the Bombay High Court Judges’ library page where it contains information on historical cases, as well as speeches, articles and research papers of judges.