Supreme Court develops software to make all its 17 benches paperless

New Delhi, May 26: The Supreme Court, which has been experimenting with tech solutions and artificial intelligence tools to streamline the working of courts, has developed a software called SCI-Interact to make all its 17 benches paperless. 

“With the help of this software, judges will be able to access files, annexures to petitions and make soft notes on computers itself, without it being accessible to others. Say, six months later, I will be able to retrieve my notes on the file,” SC judge and chairman of the apex court’s e-committee, Justice DY Chandrachud, told the Economic Times. He said tablets have been provided to judges and the software is being upgraded. “We will handhold and expand this to lawyers to further facilitate the working of courts,” he said. 

ET has learnt that this software was indigenously developed by the apex court’s computer cell. 

This software comprises five components — scanned copies of pending cases, e-filing of fresh cases, IT hardware, MPLS network with dual redundancy, and security audit. “This would minimise human touch, speed up disposal of cases and help in quick decision-making. Once the security testing is done (already underway), the project will be implemented,” SS Rathi, member, e-committee, and convener, artificial intelligence committee of the court, told ET. 

“This is an in-house project developed by our programmers and, after some initial hiccups, is back on track. Testing is currently on, and it will be unveiled soon,” another SC official told ET. 

Meanwhile, the AI committee is also working on a second project called SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court Efficiency), aimed at data mining, tracking progress of cases, legal research and other uses to ensure timely delivery of justice by judges. 

Earlier, the apex court had developed a dedicated open-source judicial domain language translation tool named SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) to translate judicial documents from English to nine vernacular languages — Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Malayalam and Bengali — and vice versa. 

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