Supreme Court: Must Establish Digitisation Cell at High Courts to Preserve District Court Records

Supreme Court: Must Establish Digitisation Cell at High Courts to Preserve District Court Records

The Supreme Court has issued directions to all the High Courts for ensuring digitalisation of lower court records. The move came while hearing a criminal appeal where the District Court records were lost.

The division bench of Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Sanjay Karol emphasized the importance of preserving court records through the use of technology and highlighted the need for a robust system of responsibility and accountability in order to ensure the proper protection and regular updating of all records, facilitating the smooth functioning of the judicial process.

The Court vehemently addressed that, “the job of the Court of Appeal is not to depend on the lower Court’s judgment to uphold the conviction but, based on the record available before it duly called from the Trial Court and the arguments advanced before it, to come to a conclusion thereon.”

The bench issued three directions for the Registrar General of the High Courts to follow.

(i) Firstly, the digitization of records must be duly undertaken with promptitude at all District Courts in all cases of criminal trial and civil suits, preferably within the time prescribed for filing an appeal within the laws of procedure.

(ii) Secondly, once the system of digitization along with the system of authentication of the digitized records is in place in their judgeship, the concerned District Judge is to ensure that the records so digitized are verified as expeditiously as possible.

(iii) Finally, a continually updated record of the Register of Records digitized shall be maintained with periodic reports being sent to the concerned High Courts for suitable directions.

The bench also underlined the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by the E-committee of the Supreme Court of India on 24 September, 2021, which provided 18 steps for the digital preservation process. It particularly includes the establishment of Judicial Digital Repositories (JDR) and a digitization cell at each High Court to monitor the progress on a day-to-day basis.

The SOP also entails an online data tracking system to keep track of the data transferred to the High Courts and to facilitate receipts for each set of transferred records to the District Courts.

“The District Courts are to have backups of all data transferred to the High Court on a monthly basis while maintaining an independent record thereof,” the Court noted.

Therefore, while noting the importance of technology in tracking records and data, the bench remarked that considering the importance and essentiality of such record, a robust system of responsibility and accountability must be developed and fostered in order to ensure the proper protection and regular updating of all records facilitating the smooth functioning of the judicial process.

In light of this, the bench emphasized the need to use technology to preserve court records.