CUTTACK: At least 50 more courts across different districts of Odisha went paperless on Monday.
With this, the total number of paperless courts in the state has gone up to 100. All the 24 courts in the Ganjam district court complex at Berhampur were among those that were made paperless in the second phase. The other 26 were started in 24 other districts.
The first paperless court in the state was inaugurated in the court of the Chief Justice of Orissa High Court on September 11, 2021. At present, 10 benches of the high court are functioning in paperless mode. While inaugurating the paperless courts in virtual mode Chief Justice Justice S Muralidhar said the 50 courts will become operational within a month in the next phase.
Chairman of Orissa High Court’s IT & AI committee Justice Subhasis Talapatra said the functioning of 50 more paperless courts is an important milestone in the journey of making all the courts in the state paperless and revolutionising the entire e-initiative process. The chief justice had earlier announced every court in Odisha will literally turn paperless by the end of this year.
The Odisha Judicial Academy (OJA) in Cuttack has been training judicial officers in using paperless courts. The chief justice said the five Regional Judicial Academies (RJAs) at Angul, Balasore, Berhampur, Jeypore and Sambalpur will now impart the same training to judicial officers.
The RJAs are training hubs for judicial officers for clusters of six to seven districts in central, western, northern, and southern regions of the state. Consequently, judicial officers will not have to travel more than an hour to attend training sessions. As a result, there will be virtually no loss in the working hours of courts.