What we need to fix our judicial system

News: The recent case involving the son of a famous celebrity highlighted the “bail-jail” connectivity issue.

A recent case has highlighted an important issue, that grant of bail by a court does not automatically immediately releases an accused. Bail orders are required to be deposited in the physical letterbox of prisons, within a timeframe of the day. A delay means, an accused spending an extra day or days in prison.

After the incident, the supreme court had directed the creation of the FASTER (Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records) System, which would transmit e-authenticated copies of the interim orders, stay orders, bail orders, and records of proceedings to the duty holders. However, after looking are the present issues, the hope for reforms is very little.

What are the reasons behind issues in bail-jail” connectivity?

In 2014, the phase 2 document for the e-courts project was launched. However, it has failed to set up the transmission of information between key institutions in the criminal justice system. It is suffering from various issues.

First, The E committee, which runs the e-Court project, is headed by the Chief Justice of India. So the onus of the project and its implementation lies completely with the judiciary. The e-Committee is not accountable to anybody. Neither the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)  nor Public Account committee of the Lok Sabha has reviewed the e-courts project.

Second, The Department of Justice (DoJ), under the Ministry of Law and Justice, commissioned two evaluations of the project. These evaluations were very limited in their scope.

Third, A budget was already approved by the government for Phase I and II of the project. But it did not achieve the expected outcome.

Fourth, ensuring Judicial independence has resulted in a lack of public scrutiny. For example, even financial audit reports are not revealed by high courts under RTI.

Source: This post is based on the article “What we need to fix our judicial system” published in the Indian Express on 6th November 2021.