CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has asked the director general of Prisons and NIC’s Odisha state centre scientist (F) Malay Kumar Das to participate in court proceedings with regards to development of a web portal for jails as part of the reforms initiative.
The division bench of Chief Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh and Justice Savitri Ratho on Thursday directed both to join the court proceedings online on November 28 and give a timeline for development of a comprehensive web-based portal.
The direction was issued after an affidavit filed by the prison authorities stated that the DG and Das had decided in a meeting on November 14 that a portal with AI-enabled features, including a chatbot, was essential for Odisha Prisons.
The court has already outlined the necessary datasets to be incorporated in the portal. The estimated cost for software development, implementation, support, and infrastructure amounts to approximately Rs 2 crore in phase-I. It was therefore decided to move the government for allotment of funds accordingly, the affidavit said.
Earlier the high court had directed the Prisons directorate to come up with a web portal for effective monitoring of the condition of prisoners in jails of the state. The direction was passed as part of adjudication on a PIL on problems in jails in which senior advocate Gautam Mishra was appointed as amicus curiae.
As part of prison reforms, the high court expected details of vocational training programs in the prisons to be systematically uploaded to the portal for enhancing transparency and accessibility. Through it, the court aimed to provide an organised overview of the various training courses available for the inmates, participation rates, and outcomes.
By documenting these details, prison authorities, mental health professionals, and advocates can better assess the effectiveness of the programs and identify areas for improvement and create scope for voluntary enrolment by under trial prisoners (UTPs) in the vocational training programmes, the court had observed in an earlier order.