Administration of justice needs an Aspirational Gatishakti

Summary – Surya Prakash BS talks about the lessons from Gati Shakti and the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) that can help transform India’s administration of justice by improving coordination with government agencies, transparency, and a focus on local needs. It highlights the need for policymakers in the judiciary and government to be open to applying learnings from other sectors to improve access to justice and Rule of Law. Read the blog to know more.

Key takeaways

Integration and Collaboration: The blog talks about the need for better coordination and integration in administration of justice, drawing inspiration from the Gati Shakti initiative. It advocates for convergence of efforts between the judiciary, government, vendors and civil society to break down silos and ensure seamless implementation of justice reforms at local levels.
Technology and Transparency: Leveraging technology, like the proposed eCourts Phase III, can enhance transparency of and efficiency in the judiciary. Dashboards similar to those in Gati Shakti and Aspirational Districts Programmes can help track progress, allowing administrators and the public to monitor the implementation of crucial projects with huge budgetary outlay in the justice sector.
Citizen-Centric Reforms: There is also a need to focus on last-mile (some have rightly called it the first-mile!) access to justice, ensuring that ongoing programmes directly benefit citizens where most needed. This would require coming up with a framework to identify court complexes and taluks or districts that need the most attention, metrics to track progress, and ways to measure impact.

The Union Government marked the third anniversary of the Gati Shakti just a few days back. When launched in October 2021, it was an ambitious attempt to provide a nuts-and-bolts solution to tackle time delays and cost overruns, lack of comprehensive project management, and quality control issues in infrastructure projects. It is a multimodal connectivity infrastructure for planning, designing and execution of the infrastructure projects with a common vision. It brings together government departments at union and state levels, parastatal agencies, implementation agencies and users. Although its primary focus is on the logistics sector, it is apparent that by providing a platform for integrated planning and execution that breaks the silos between government ministries and departments, focusing on real-time data and transparency and with it a holistic programme management approach, the Gati Shakti yojana could provide learnings for other sectors as well. You can get a peek into the working of the GatiShakti portal here. A view of the dashboard is extracted below:

Dashoard-Ministries

Figure 1

Dashoard-States/UTS

Figure 2

Similarly, the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP), launched in January 2018, aims to quickly and effectively transform 112 most under-developed districts across the country based on identified key performance indicators. The Aspirational Districts Programme is a product of collective effort in which States are the main drivers. Similar to Gatishakti, the focus is on improving coordination between departments, identifying locations that need to be prioritized, and publishing real time data (like the one found below) to push for change where it is most required.

Figure 3

Rule of Law in the country could improve if administration of justice incorporated learnings from these programmes. The functioning of courts and tribunals at a district/taluk level are influenced by Supreme Court initiatives (like eCourts, and digitisation), respective High Court policies and facilitation, and funded by the state and Union governments, and dependent heavily on district level court officials and executive for progress and adoption. There is a need to bring together all the initiatives and efforts to ensure that there is clarity and sustained focus on change at the ground level for citizens.

That the administration of justice is in the concurrent list further highlights the need for convergence and collaboration. In 2023 the Union Cabinet approved Rs. 7210 crores for eCourts Phase III for technological transformation of courts. Based on the radically transformative vision for the Phase 3, it is now intended “to usher in a regime of maximum ease of justice by moving towards digital, online and paperless courts through digitization of the entire court records including legacy records and by bringing in universalization of e-Filing/ e-Payments through saturation of all court complexes with e-Sewa Kendras.” It also envisages “intelligent smart systems enabling data-based decision making for judges and registries while scheduling or prioritizing cases.” The main objective of eCourts Phase-III is to “create a unified technology platform for the judiciary, which will provide a seamless and paperless interface between the courts, the litigants and other stakeholders.” This is being implemented under the joint partnership of Department of Justice, Government of India, eCommittee, Supreme Court of India, in a decentralized manner through the respective High Courts. State governments are expected to supplement funding for eCourts Phase III.

The Minister for Law and Justice, while responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha in August 2024, has presented the latest information on the eCourts Phase III. It also includes some claims on the progress and adoption of technology at district courts made by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER). For instance, it is said that ‘(m)ajority of judges and court officials feel that eCourts project has reduced pendency of cases because of easy access to case laws resulting in better research.’ And ‘high level of satisfaction was expressed with the access and quality of various ICT facilities provided under the eCourts project.” While without a doubt there has been some progress, a blanket statement like this jar with anybody who has interacted at the district court level. The external agency’s report could be made public to give a better sense of the context and methodology based on which such claims are being made.

Apart from eCourts, the Union government is also funding the digitisation of records and infrastructure development at district levels. The NyayaVikas portal for infrastructure projects has been designed to track physical and financial progress of construction and the citizen has not been imagined as its end-user. It is possible to be imaginative and go further.

An initiative in the administration of justice sphere that draws on both GatiShakti and the Aspirational Districts Programme should enable at a court complex level:

Convergence – of programmes, schemes and projects of governments, High Court and Supreme Court.
Collaboration – between Centre, State, District Administration, High Court, Supreme Court and civil society.
Citizen-centricity – focus on last mile changes that impact access to justice and rule of law and transparency.

A dashboard (or parts of it) should be made open to the public while the primary users of this would be administrators responsible for justice programmes/projects. Some parts of it could also be thrown open to the public for feedback and surveys on the functioning of sub-components that are implemented. Such dashboards are not new to the judiciary – the National Judicial Data Grid has transformed visibility on the functioning of the courts. Learnings from this initiative would also be relevant to this initiative.

The United Nations Development Programme’s 2021 evaluation of the Aspiration District Programme identified key dependencies for its success:

Dedicated personnel to be appointed at district level.
Periodically revise the metrics to account for progress made and ensure continual progress.
Take into account local variations based on socio-economic factors.

These are relevant for initiatives in administration of justice as well.

By drawing lessons from the Gati Shakti initiative and the Aspirational Districts Programme, India’s judicial system has the potential to undergo a transformative overhaul. Integrating technology, fostering collaboration between multiple stakeholders, and ensuring citizen-centric approaches can revolutionize access to justice. A unified platform that breaks bureaucratic silos, enhances transparency, and focuses on local implementation is crucial to creating a responsive and efficient judiciary—one that upholds the rule of law and meets the evolving needs of society.