Computers gather moss in lower courts

April 12, 2013 01:38 am | Updated 01:41 am IST - Kochi:

When some of the lower courts in the district were computerised, the objective was to make the judicial system more accessible to the public. Computers were supposed to make it easier for court staff to retrieve information regarding cases and make the details available to the public. Almost three years after computers were installed in some of the lower courts in the district, they are of no big help to the public or court staff.

Unused potential

Their potential still remains largely unused in the few courts in the district where they have been installed.

Lists of cases called each day are still made by hand in some of these courts and persons wishing to track the status of various cases have no option but to enquire at the court personally.

Court officials hardly ever use the system and still pore over the court diary to find out the status of any case.

Untrained staff

A court official said the staff was not provided enough training to utilise the potential of computers.

“We were given a week’s training in the evenings and we were told things like ‘This is the monitor and this is the CPU.’ That was all. Some people here still don’t know how to use the system,” said the official. Malfunctioning machinery is another headache for court staff.

The computerised High Court of Kerala has a website that posts updated information regarding status of disposed and pending cases, judgments passed, and cause lists.

The lower courts, however, have no mechanism to make this information available to the public easily. Any enquiry eats away the time of the court staff.

Less manpower

A court official said additional staff had not been recruited when new computers were installed.

“Earlier, we had to enter data only in the court diary. Now we have the added work of recording data in the system too,” he said.

Process incomplete

Computerisation has not yet been completed in many of the courts in the State.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.