KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday issued a notice to the provincial law officer on a petition seeking judicial automation, digitisation of legal record and e-court.

The petitioner also submitted that establishment of a national judicial database and online hearing must be initiated to deal with the deadlock of around two million cases pending across the country.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar conducted the preliminary hearing of the petition and stated in its order: “Subject to maintainability particularly on the point of non-joinder misjoinder of the parties, issue notice to the AG Sindh for 17.08.2022.”

Sheema Kermani, through her lawyer, petitioned the SHC stating that she was a senior citizen and founder of a non-government organisation and she approached the court for court automation.

She submitted that the concept of e-court had gained momentum in Canada, Singapore and Thailand and the basic idea behind it was to decrease the third-party intervention, which paved the way for corruption. Neighbouring India was also excelling in e-court, she added.

Citing the ministry of law & justice secretary, Sindh chief secretary and others as respondents, the petitioner argued that digitisation of court record would help faster adjudication of cases, improve accessibility to legal documents and make it faster for multiple government agencies to access and utilise information.

She further submitted that an e-court project should be initiated, which could perform scanning and digital preservation of cases record in district judiciary as record rooms had no further space to keep up with the piling cases and rainwater seepage in storage facility was damaging the record considerably.

The petitioner stated that the federal government had established a Rs1.5 billion access to justice development fund, which could be utilised for setting up national judicial database to keep the record and status of pending cases and provision of information from national to provincial and district level in real time.

She sought directives for the respondents to formulate a policy and framework to introduce latest use of information technology in the field of judiciary and law, and allocation of necessary budget for the purpose.

The petitioner also asked the SHC to issue directives for the respondents to establish a judicial national database, enhance e-court and online court projects, improve IT infrastructure in courts and computerise the court documentation.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2022