Context:
- The Supreme Court onboarded its case data on the National Judicial Data Grid.
What is this portal?
- The NJDG portal is a national repository of data relating to cases instituted, pending and disposed of by the courts across the country.
What is the National Judicial Data Grid?
- NJDG is a database of orders, judgments and case details of 18,735 District and subordinate Courts and High Courts created as an online platform under the eCourts Project.
- Its key feature is that the data is updated in real-time and has granular data up to the Taluka level.
Who runs the NJDG?
- The NJDG was built as part of Phase II of the e-Courts project, which is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
- The platform has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in close coordination with the in-house software development team of the Computer Cell, Registry of the Supreme Court with an interactive interface and analytics dashboard.
How does the data help?
- NJDG works as a monitoring tool to identify, manage & reduce pendency of cases. Take, for instance, the Supreme Court data.
- The pendency in SC is largely due to legacy cases since the Court is currently disposing of approximately the same number of cases filed on an annual basis.
- It also helps identify specific bottlenecks in judicial processes. For example, if the number of land disputes in a particular state shoots up, it helps policymakers look into whether the law needs to be strengthened.
- It also helps generate inputs related to particular areas of law. For example, to track cases related to land disputes, Land Records data of 26 States have been linked with NJDG.