Supreme Court rejects plea to include tribunals in National Judicial Data Grid

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea to include tribunals in the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG)..The NJDG is a database of orders, judgments and case details of 18,735 District and Subordinate Courts in the country apart from High Courts and the Supreme Court. It has been created as an online platform under the eCourts Project. A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra today made it clear that tribunals currently fall outside the scope of the eCourts Project, which focuses solely on district courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court.The Court explained that inclusion of tribunals in the project will cause funding problems."You may approach the Department of Justice regarding this. NJDG is part of the eCourts project. It looks at district courts, High Courts, and the Supreme Court. So eCourts does not look at tribunals at all. So we cannot impinge on this. Otherwise, funds will be a problem. 7,000 crores were allocated for these courts and not the tribunals. The moment we say tribunals will be brought on, the funds by the Centre will be spent on tribunals," the Court said..Advocate Kishan Chand Jain, representing the petitioner, argued that the Supreme Court could direct the disbursement of additional funds to include tribunals in the NJDG..However, the apex court maintained that there is no administrative sanction for tribunals under the eCourts project. "So tribunals cannot come under it now. The plea to bring tribunals under NJDG cannot be accepted since it's a project under the eCourts project. The petitioner can avail other remedies it has under law and can approach the government as well," the Court said while dismissing the plea..NJDG data is updated on a near real-time basis by the connected District and Taluka courts. It provides data relating to judicial proceedings/ decisions of all computerized district and subordinate courts of the country apart from the High Court and the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court was integrated into NJDG in September 2023.