Next step is to make judgments available in all Indian languages: CJI DY Chandrachud

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Saturday indicated that the next step for the Indian judiciary in an increasingly digitised world would be to make judgments from various courts available in all Indian languages, possibly with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools..The CJI who was first elevated as a judge to the Bombay High Court before reaching the Supreme Court, was speaking at an event organised by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa to felicitate him. "I met with a professor of Madras who works in AI and the next step is to have judgments in all regional languages of the country," he said..CJI Chandrachud, who is also the Chairman of the Supreme Court e-Committee, began his address by speaking about the recent launch of the electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) project which provides a digital version of the Supreme Court's judgments in the manner as they are reported in the official law report - 'Supreme Court Reports'. He said of the main objectives of the e-SCR project was to make judgments available to all, for free."...the thought is that not every lawyer can afford private reporters, and through technology the idea is to remove the barrier of access to information. The idea is to make information available to lawyers for free," the CJI explained. However, he emphasised that merely making judgments available for free may not be sufficient to achieve the goal of removing barriers to access information unless the judgments are also made available in all regional languages."But then the niceties of English will not help rural lawyers. So the idea is to make information accessible to everyone," he said.The CJI further pointed out that access to the legal profession is more easily available to those who attended English schools and then cracked the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) to finally join a National Law University. The least that can be done to even out the playing field would be to provide free access to knowledge platforms, he opined. .Apart from CJI Chandrachud, chief guests of the event also included Supreme Court judge Justice BR Gavai and Bombay High Court Acting Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala..The event also saw the unveiling of a Civil and Criminal Practice handbook making the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa the first state bar council to publish a book of such kind. The handbook also includes a web bank which has over 1000 drafts including civil drafts, criminal complaints, and deeds. Read what the CJI said about paying junior lawyers here..[Read our live coverage of the event]