BANGALORE: Karnataka has become the first State in the country to computerise the judicial system. In a few weeks, all courts will be linked through computers to the High Court.

Chairman of the committee on computers and senior Judge of the High Court S.R. Bannurmath told The Hindu that the link with the High Court would enable it to improve monitoring of the functioning of the subordinate judiciary.

He said a pilot project had been taken up to link the courts in Mysore, Chikmagalur and Mangalore with the High Court, and it helped monitoring of the district, taluk and special courts. The inputs were being used for preparing the State-wide project.

Mr. Bannurmath said courts in Bangalore — the District and Sessions Court complex on Old Post Office Road, the magistrate courts on Nruputunga Road and the Mayo Hall courts on M.G. Road — had been linked to the

High Court, and it was only a matter of time before all 637 courts in the State were connected to the High Court.

He said the project would help High Court Judges to monitor the functioning of the subordinate judiciary, and each of them had been assigned a district. Until now it was a Herculean task for them to personally look into the problems of the judiciary in the districts, monitor progress and suggest measures to tone up the administration. The judges often had to depend on "paper work" for data and to send instructions. Besides, all communication had to be on paper. This would change once the project came through: at the touch of a button, a judge in charge of a district could send and receive information and monitor the work of a judge or a presiding officer of a court.

Network

Mr. Bannurmath said a LAN (local area network) connection would be set up in a court hall (in a district) and the court clerk required to enter the day's cases in the computer. The data on the computer would be analysed, and the High Court could easily find out how much time the court had spent on one case and how many cases had cleared or adjourned.

Citing an example, Mr. Bannurmath said that when the programme was introduced in Mangalore, he was able to find out about a judge who came late to the court hall and left early. The judge was called to Bangalore and shown the data. The judge promised to be punctual, Mr. Bannurmath said.

The modalities of the computerisation programme have been worked out and the infrastructure for implementing it is ready.

The servers in the High Court are being upgraded and new software is being installed. It is only a matter of a time before computer links between all courts and the High Court are provided.

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