CUTTACK: After a gap of six years, the Orissa High Court released its annual report highlighting the innovations and technological strides made for making the judicial administration more transparent and accessible to people.
The Annual Report-2021 was released at the three-day District Judges’ Conference, 2022 which started here on Friday.
The report said one of the foremost steps was the establishment of a state-of-the-art record room digitisation centre (RRDC) and the record rooms of the High Court along with the scanning and digitisation centre. The RRDC also accommodates the district court digitisation centre (DCDC) of Cuttack. By the end of the year, 1,56,723 case records having 37,20,724 pages were digitised.
The concept and practice of storage, scanning, preservation, and retrieval of legacy records adopted in the High Court are aimed to be taken to the district and taluka courts. Accordingly, DCDCs in Cuttack, Ganjam, Sambalpur, and Balasore have been established on a pilot basis. By the end of the year, 63,893 case records having 37,55,687 pages were digitised.
While the Chief Justice’s Court became the first paperless court on September 11, 2021, three more benches of Justice BP Routray, Justice SK Panigrahi and Justice Savitri Ratho also became paperless during the year. Introduction of e-filing of cases, e-payment of court fees, virtual courtrooms, state of the art mediation and arbitration centres, and e-custody certificate system, which provides comprehensive information of a prisoner including his antecedents, were also part of the transformation. Live streaming of court proceedings of the court of Chief Justice was also introduced.
The year was marked by the launching of an order communication portal in April, 2021 to facilitate secure and prompt communication of orders and judgments to district courts in a paperless environment.
While construction of 14 court complexes with provision for 102 courts was completed, six of them were district court complexes at Bhawanipatna, Nabarangpur, Jeypore, Sonepur, Malkangiri and Bhadrak “The newly built model court complex at Odagaon in Nayagarh is the first-of-its-kind where the court building, residential quarters of the officers, the staff and the transit house, Bar hall, canteen etc. are all located within a single complex. Besides, construction of 19 residential quarters for judicial officers and 42 for staff was completed,” the report said.