Courts Go Digital: India's Sensational e-Courts Mission Mode Project

India’s justice system used to run almost entirely on paper. Today, thanks to the e-Courts Mission Mode Project, it’s a system that can be tracked, searched and accessed online. Since 2014, both the number of cases filed and the number resolved have nearly tripled, and courts have managed to dispose of more cases than get filed in most years. Over 753 crore pages of court records now exist in digital form, and thousands of e-Sewa Kendras have opened up to help people who might otherwise struggle to navigate a digital system. Put together, these changes are making justice quicker, more visible and easier to reach for ordinary people.

Contents

A System Built for the Paper Era Needed an Overhaul Three Phases, Three Different Priorities What Phase III Has Achieved So Far The NJDG Makes Case Backlogs Visible to the Public e-Filing Removes the Need to Show Up in Person Remote Hearings Cut Out the Need to Travel Digitisation Now Links Police, Courts, Prisons and Forensic Labs Together Tracking Cases Has Never Been Easier e-Sewa Kendras Bridge the Gap for Citizens AI Is the Next Frontier for Phase III Building a Judiciary That’s Genuinely More Accessible

A System Built for the Paper Era Needed an Overhaul

For a judiciary serving over a billion people, relying on paper files and physical courtrooms created real problems. People routinely spent money and time they couldn’t spare just traveling to courts to submit or collect documents. That kind of friction made justice slow and costly for exactly the people who needed it most.

The government responded by launching the e-Courts Mission in 2007, with the goal of digitising court proceedings and documents to speed things up. It also aimed to make the whole process cheaper, easier to access and more transparent, not just for litigants but for lawyers, judges and court staff too. The Mission has since gone through multiple phases and is now in its third.

Three Phases, Three Different Priorities

Phase I, running from 2011 to 2015, was about groundwork: computerising more than 14,000 courts and putting basic network infrastructure in place.
Phase II, from 2015 to 2023, shifted focus toward the citizen-facing side of things. This is when the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), eFiling, and eSewaKendras (physical help desks offering digital court services) all came online. Video conferencing infrastructure also grew more than fivefold during this period, opening up virtual access to hearings on a much larger scale.
Phase III (2023-2027), the Mission is pushing toward paperless, more intelligent courts, digitising records at scale, expanding virtual hearings, connecting different justice institutions more tightly, and bringing in technologies like Artificial Intelligence, analytics and Optical Character Recognition.

What Phase III Has Achieved So Far

Components/Achievements:

Fully functional eSewa Kendras – 1,806 established across court complexes
Infrastructure for paperless courts – 474 courts equipped with necessary hardware
Expansion of Virtual Courts – 538 courts equipped
Implementation of e-filing – 4,519 courts
Video Conferencing (VC) infrastructure upgrade – 7,553 establishments have VC facilities, including courts, jails and hospitals
Solar facilities for ICT infrastructure – 1,626 court complexes equipped
National Service & Tracking of electronic Processes (NSTEP) – 6,895 courts have NSTEP facility
Migration to S3WAAS platform – 734 High Court and District Court sites migrated
Additional hardware from Phase II – 18,380 courts provided
Integration with Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) – All High Courts have implemented ICJS
Training of stakeholders – 2,372 trainings held
Knowledge Management – IIT Madras developing a Learning Management System (LMS)
Connectivity – 74 sites connected via Software Defined Wide Area Network (SDWAN)

Virtual hearings, video conferencing, case trackers and dashboards showing what’s pending versus resolved have all sped up and organised court proceedings. Every stakeholder in the system, from judges to litigants, benefits in some way.

The NJDG Makes Case Backlogs Visible to the Public

Launched during Phase II, the National Judicial Data Grid is a public dashboard tracking court orders, judgments and case details as they happen, spanning every level of the judiciary. It runs three separate dashboards, one each for the Supreme Court, High Courts and District Courts, and together they surface useful details on how courts are actually functioning: how many cases are pending or resolved in High Courts and Subordinate Courts, how cases break down by category and stage (admission, hearing, judgment, disposal), and even why delays happen, whether it’s a missing party, pending paperwork, a court stay or some other procedural snag, along with how long those delays last.

By putting this data out in the open, the NJDG has pushed the system toward greater accountability. It’s also become a genuine planning and monitoring tool for High Court judges, District Judges and High Court Registries handling remote administration.

e-Filing Removes the Need to Show Up in Person

Filing court documents, complaints, written statements, replies, applications, used to mean physically showing up. The e-Filing system has done away with that, letting people submit documents online from wherever they are. It works in English and regional languages both, and it’s available across District Courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court.

The platform handles quite a lot: online payments, submission of Vakalatnamas, e-signing, video-recorded oaths, application filing, portfolio management for advocates and litigants, the ability to add colleagues or juniors as case partners, dashboards tracking case status, and ready-made templates for commonly filed pleadings.

Since the system launched through 30 June 2026, more than 1.25 crore cases have been filed through it, and the e-payments component alone has processed ₹1,404 crore in court fees plus ₹75 crore in fines. Phase III also involves digitising crores of older court records, which protects them from physical decay and makes finding and researching them much faster than digging through paper archives.

Remote Hearings Cut Out the Need to Travel

Video conferencing now lets litigants, lawyers, witnesses and other participants join hearings without traveling, making courts more reachable regardless of city or state. The numbers here are substantial: VC facilities now span 7,553 establishments, including courts, jails and hospitals, and courts nationwide have conducted over 4.18 crore remote hearings this way. Livestreaming of proceedings is live in 11 High Courts.

There are also 31 Virtual Courts dedicated to online adjudication of traffic challans, which between them have processed 11.33 crore challans worth ₹1,135.79 crore. And Nyaya Shruti, launched in 2024 under the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System, lets accused persons, witnesses, police, prosecutors, forensic experts and prisoners testify virtually, saving considerable time and resources in resolving cases.

Digitisation Now Links Police, Courts, Prisons and Forensic Labs Together

The digital transformation doesn’t stop at the courtroom door, it now runs through the entire criminal justice chain:

ICJS (Interoperable Criminal Justice System) lets police, courts, prisons, forensic labs and prosecution exchange FIRs, charge-sheets, orders and reports electronically.
CCTNS (Crime & Criminal Tracking Network and System) computerises police work from FIR through charge-sheet, with deadline alerts tied to the Nyaya Sanhita for investigating officers.
ITSSO (Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences) is a dashboard that tracks investigations in women’s and children’s sexual-offence cases against charge-sheet deadlines.
e-Sakshya is a secure app for capturing and managing digital evidence while preserving its integrity from the moment it’s collected through to court.
e-Summons handles the electronic generation, transmission and execution of court summons.
MedLEaPR (Medico Legal Examination and Postmortem Reporting) gives hospitals an online system for medico-legal exams and postmortem reports.
Nyaya Shruti is the video-conferencing platform enabling virtual testimony from the accused, witnesses, police, prosecutors and forensic experts.
e-Forensic manages case handling digitally, end to end, across forensic labs.
e-Prison is a cloud-based national network for managing prisons and prisoners.
e-Prosecution digitally links police and prosecution to speed up legal opinions.
NAFIS (National Automated Fingerprint Identification System) is a centralised biometric database enabling real-time fingerprint matching against criminal records.

Tracking Cases Has Never Been Easier

Lawyers, litigants, judges and others can now follow case status through apps, the multilingual e-Courts Services Portal, email and SMS, cutting down significantly on the need for physical court visits.

Over 4 lakh SMSs and 6 lakh emails go out daily. The multilingual e-Courts services portal gets roughly 35 lakh hits a day. The e-Courts Services mobile app, downloaded 3.84 crore times, gives lawyers and litigants case status and cause list information. The JustIS app, with 22,594 downloads, helps judges organise and monitor their own judicial workload.

For delivering summons, bailiffs now use NSTEP, a centralised, GPS-enabled web and mobile app that replaces the old slow paper-based process with something transparent and trackable, speeding up service across districts and states.

e-Sewa Kendras Bridge the Gap for Citizens

Set up within court complexes, e-Sewa Kendras function as citizen-friendly help desks where people can get guidance navigating legal procedures. These kiosks handle a wide range of tasks: answering questions about case status and hearing dates, processing applications for certified copies, handling e-filing (scanning documents, adding e-signatures, uploading to CIS and generating filing numbers), assisting with e-stamp paper purchases and e-payments, helping people obtain Aadhaar-based digital signatures, promoting the eCourts mobile app, booking eMulakat appointments for jail visits, answering questions about judges’ leave schedules, guiding people to free legal aid through Legal Services Authorities, facilitating traffic challan resolution through virtual courts, explaining how to join video-conference hearings, and sharing judgment copies via email or WhatsApp.

As of 30 June 2026, there are 49 e-Sewa Kendras operating across all High Courts and 2,535 across District Courts.

AI Is the Next Frontier for Phase III

Bringing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into High Courts through 2027 is the next major push under Phase III. Of the Mission’s total ₹7,210 crore outlay, ₹53.57 crore has been set aside specifically for this. The goal is to enhance legal research, case management, transcription, translation and support for judicial decision-making.

Several initiatives are currently in pilot testing. AI and ML tools now transcribe oral arguments in Constitutional Bench matters, with the transcripts published on the Supreme Court’s website. LegRAA (Legal Research and Analysis Assistant) helps judges with research and document analysis.

Digital Courts 2.1 gives judges and judicial officers a single, paperless window for managing all case-related information and tasks, and includes voice-to-text (ASR-SHRUTI) and translation (PANINI) tools to help with dictating orders and judgments. Judgments are being translated into 18 Indian languages through the eSCR portal, working with the National Informatics Centre, with over 83,000 translated so far, including 36,344 into Hindi as of March 2025. And an AI tool built alongside IIT Madras automatically flags defects in e-filed petitions and pulls out case data and metadata, with prototype access already granted to 200 Advocates-on-Record and integration into the e-filing system and the Court’s case management software (ICMIS) currently underway.

The e-Courts Mission has fundamentally reshaped how India’s judicial system operates. In-person court visits and stacks of paperwork have given way to something far more trackable, efficient and easier to navigate. New AI tools are helping stakeholders across the system work more effectively, and people can now access judicial services from virtually anywhere. The net result is a justice system that’s more transparent, faster and cheaper for the public to engage with.

Building a Judiciary That’s Genuinely More Accessible

What started as a traditionally paper-heavy, opaque process-driven system has become something far more transparent and technology-enabled. The National Judicial Data Grid, for the first time, has made case backlogs visible to anyone who wants to look. Over 753 crore pages of old records have been digitised and made searchable.

With this infrastructure in place, the judiciary is better equipped to handle growing caseloads efficiently. As Phase III runs through 2027, it continues pushing toward a justice system built to work for everyone, no matter where they live or what circumstances they’re navigating.

Key Takeaway: The e-Courts Mission Mode Project has transformed India’s judiciary into a technology-enabled, transparent, and citizen-centric justice delivery system through phased digitisation, paperless court processes, and the integration of digital and AI-based tools.

Key initiatives such as the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), e-Filing, e-Sewa Kendras, virtual courts, video conferencing, and large-scale digitisation of court records have improved access, reduced delays, and enhanced judicial efficiency, while platforms like ICJS, CCTNS, ITSSO, e-Sakshya, e-Prison, e-Prosecution, NAFIS, and NSTEP have created an integrated digital criminal justice ecosystem linking courts with police, prisons, forensic laboratories, and prosecution agencies.

As Phase III progresses, the adoption of Artificial Intelligence for legal research, transcription, translation, case management, and judicial support underscores India’s broader commitment to leveraging digital governance and emerging technologies to build a faster, more accessible, and accountable justice system in line with the vision of Digital India and Viksit Bharat.

M.C.Q.

Question 1: The National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) primarily serves which of the following purposes?

A. Conducting online court hearings
B. Providing a public database of case pendency, disposal, orders, and judgments across courts
C. Managing prison administration
D. Digitizing police FIRs

Question 2: Which of the following correctly matches the digital platform with its function?