Has Supreme Court’s new website abandoned the Free Text Search Option under the Case Status?

While migrating to it new website, the Supreme Court seems to have sacrificed one of its tried and tested tool of research to decipher and unravel its nearly 1000-plus daily orders produced by its various benches every day. The Supreme Court’s new website retains almost all the search options which the Case Status & Daily Orders sections had – except one, that is, Free Text..Case Status under the old website:.The move to drop the text wise query as part of the Free Text Search Option, under the Case Status Section of its new website, will have unintended consequences. It will affect the Court’s efforts to ensure transparency in its functioning, since it will make data difficult to access to the litigants and non-litigant public alike..For those who are interested in understanding and unravelling the Court’s processes in their various dimensions, the task is likely to be much more time-consuming and daunting..For example, two of the popular columns published by Bar & Bench every week – Judgments Reserved and Recusal Watch – rely heavily on the Free Text search to source information. With the mode not available on the new website, the only option would be to discontinue the two weekly columns..This is likely to further discourage a close scrutiny of the Supreme Court’s multi-faceted functioning by reporters and scholars..The new website appears to assume that its users should have some specific information about what they are looking for, before accessing it. Thus, they are expected to have information about one of these – Diary Number, Case Number, Name of the party or advocate, High Court number or Filing defects. Thus, it imposes a serious restriction on right of the ordinary litigants and non-litigants who may not have any of these details, to access the Supreme Court’s website..When the new website retains all other search options of the Case Status under the previous website, it is inexplicable why only the Free Text Search Option (FTSO) has been dispensed with..It cannot be, as one may be tempted to infer, that the Court’s new dispensation wants to deny access to information which encourages shedding more light on its functioning. The omission, in all likelihood, could be only inadvertent. It is, therefore, earnestly hoped that the authorities take note of the omission and rectify the same.