Court to digitise 20 crore pages of case bundles

The Madras High Court has decided to digitise around 20 crore pages of case bundles as well as administrative files and store them digitally for easy access. An experienced private company has been engaged to scan all the documents.

An official at the High Court Bench here said the court had called for tenders from reputed companies, with an annual turnover of over Rs. 100 crore, for awarding the contract and getting the work done by the end of next year.

“This will go a long way in ensuring speedy disposal of cases whose bundles have been gathering dust in court record rooms for years together. When lower court records are digitised, forwarding them to the High Court would not take time,” he said. The official pointed out that some judges of the High Court were allergic to dust and hence they avoided hearing old cases. “This will change if all old court records are available electronically and accessed at the click of a button,” he added. As per the tender conditions, the work should be carried out in a Digitisation Centre to be set up on the High Court premises with the court administration providing electricity, air conditioners, and other basic electrical fixtures required for the job. The bidder should ensure that state-of-the-art, tamper-proof and licensed software was used.

The move will provide relief to some judges who were said to be allergic to dust