MADURAI: To ensure full-scale operationalisation of the Court Case Monitoring System (CCMS) for effective digital coordination between the High Court and the government departments, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Registry of the Madras High Court to digitize all court documents and upload them in CCMS, with further directions the Public, Home, and IT departments to ensure that the data shared through CCMS platform is made effectively available to not just the secretariat, but all government offices in the state.
Justice B Pugalendhi gave the directions while hearing a petition filed by a finance company seeking direction to the Karur town police to file a report in a cheating case registered against a man for pledging 418.4 grams of spurious gold, resulting in a loss of Rs 16.8 lakh to the company. After two sub-inspectors of police inadvertently gave incorrect information to the HC in connection with the case, the judge opined that such a mistake could have been avoided if there had been an effective digital communication system between courts, government officials, and law officers.
Noting that the government has introduced CCMS to monitor and coordinate the handling of all categories of court cases involving the government, the judge had earlier ordered the decentralisation of CCMS, which was presently accessible only to the secretariat. He also wanted to streamline communication between the police department and the government law officers through the use of liaison officers, e-mail, and video conferencing facilities.
When the case was heard again, Justice Pugalendhi appreciated the progress and issued further directions to the government to provide appropriate priority, administrative support, storage space, and resources for the maintenance, scalability, and continual enhancement of CCMS.
However, he also told the Registry to ensure that case documents are transmitted to government departments exclusively through the CCMS application, without third-party involvement. The government should retain exclusive control and full responsibility for the custody, security, and management of data transmitted to and stored in the CCMS servers, he added.
A dedicated technical coordination team should also be established at Madras HC and Madurai Bench as a single point of contact for assistance, and the Registry, with the government’s assistance, should also examine the feasibility of creating a dedicated data centre for secure hosting of judicial data digitally, the judge said and disposed of the petition.