The Department of Justice (DoJ) of the Ministry of Law and Justice has completed 85 per cent of its eCourts project to computerise 14,249 courts in India, which it began in 2007. At least 12,233 courts have been computerised in six years of the project, according to a response to a right to information (RTI) filed by Delhi-based advocate Kush Kalra.

More than 200 courts were computerised in the first quarter of 2013, and the proposed completion date for the project is 31 March 2014.

The DoJ’s reply to the RTI stated:

“The ICT [information and communication technology] enablement involves several steps starting from site readiness to installation of LAN/hardware and software deployment. As on 31^st April 2013, a total of 12,233 courts have been computerised in the country.

“The eCourts functioning as paperless courts is not envisaged in the current scope of the project. However this has been attempted and tried successfully on a pilot basis in one court in Delhi and Gujarat each. For the present, the project envisages ICT enablement and rendering of computerised services to the stakeholders through the judicial service centres being set up at each district/subordinate court.”

700 district courts in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai were first computerised from 2001 to 2003, and 900 more were added to this list in 2003, according to the website of the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The overall government approved project cost for the computerisation of the 14,249 courts is Rs 935 crore, according to the DoJ’s website, which states that 12,030 courts had been computerised by 31 January 2013.