ICT Initiatives – Punjab and Haryana High Court

Best Practices Adopted in Data Centre

• High Court data centres are protected from fire. Fire detectors and hooters integrated aspirating smoke detectors (ASD) system are installed and it monitor on 24x7 basis.
• High Court has the infrastructure for providing the automated backup facility to the servers located in our Data Centre. We have one Automated LTO 5 Tape Library off Tandberg (2 Drives), which help in providing concurrent backup process for multiple server
• High Court data centre is equipped with 8 no. of High end blade servers and 14 no. of Rack servers. We have 3 no. of Enterprise level Storage System (SAN) with 25 TB raw capacity in each data centre, which is configured in RAID-1 and RAID-5 Disk Configuration System.
• In data centre we are also using Virtualization concept in our data centre. All small applications are running as virtual machines using KVM and VMWARE.
• All incident activities related to servers, UPSs are integrated with SMS and email server. All concerned gets alert messages in case of any unwanted activity with servers and UPSs.
• The data centre systems are secured with cyber security infrastructure consisting of UTM Firewall (Network and Application), Vulnerability Manager, -2- Server Access control Tool, Centralized Antivirus Server. (TREND MICRO-Apex One).
• Main High Court Campus has 3 internet leased lines (300 mbps, 34 mbps and 4 mbps).
• In addition to primary data centre we have another site i.e. secondary data centre at NCC, which have redundant copy of all Application and Database servers installed at primary site. In case of down of primary server, we have can get up secondary site without any data loss.
• Two cloud servers with 4TB space at National Data Center, Shashtri Park, New Delhi are functional to give live case status with synchronization time of 10 minutes.
• In order to meet the increasing requirement of high availability and reliability of mission critical applications, High Court has set up one more data centre at Judicial Archive Building, Industrial Area, Phase II, Chandigarh. This Data Centre is named as Backup/Archived Data Centre, designed to provide full backup in case of down/loss of data of servers installed at primary data centre.
• Primary, Secondary & Archive sites host complete data & all applications independently against any eventuality to ensure ZERO data loss.
• As on date we have setup separate papebookserver in thiHon’ble court, using this server we are providing access to more than 31 Lakh paper books and 50 Lakh Interim and Final orders to the Hon’ble Judges, concerned advocates and Government departments through E-diary account. This High Court is first high court in India who has provided digitized paper books to advocates and departments through their ediary user on public portal which can be used through worldwide.

Facilities to the Hon’ble Judges

• Laptop.
• Web connectivity.
• Dragon Speech to Text software.
• Tablet with web connectivity.
• Legal Case Finder software.
• Digital Magazine portal.

Digital Display Board

In 2009, the High Court began the state-of-art Digital Display Sign Boards to have information in respect of hearing of cases in progress in Courts by replacing analog signage. In this year LCD display screens were being installed in the corridors, Bar Rooms and other places frequented by Public to display the number of cases being heard in each court room. Such display is also installed in each court to enable an Advocate to find out the case being heard in the said court and also in other courts so that he can organize himself to appear in the Court Room, where his case is likely to be heard. Recently the data shown in Display Boards is being redesigned to show more information like Passover Cases and newly information in form of videos.

Now 56 no. of LCDs were procured and got installed outside each court. These are directly connected with display screen installed inside each court and shows data of its respective court.

Online Display Board

1. Now digital Display Board has been made online also.
2. One can visit website of Punjab & Haryana High Court i.e. High Court of Punjab and Haryana and can view Display Board live which shows all the Courts in session along with the cases being heard in each Court at that time with a delay of 30 seconds by clicking “Display Board” button.
3. It displays all the Serial Numbers of the cases currently being heard in the Courts.
4. Digital display has been designed to show case status in a particular Court, its cause list, all cases listed, details of each listed cases along with orders passed therein.

Automation and Digitization of Central Copy Branch

In 20.09.2011, Central Copy got fully computerized. Copy Branch has been overhauled and is doing almost all day to day jobs like issuance of Receipt of Petitions on Thermal Printers, Costing, and Delivery of Documents etc. using IT. The status of petition can be viewed using touch screen and on website also. Use of heavy duty Toshiba Network Printers and Auto Staplers Attachment have improved the overall speed of the delivery system. Because of Computerization of Copy Branch, the Status of Petitions is made available through Touch Screen Kiosks and even on website also. In 2015 one plotter for scanning and printing of the large size maps tagged in Judicial files was procured by this court.

After computerization of copy branch, now all petitions are being applied through this mode. Now 95% copies were issued after downloading relevant documents from DMS.

Digitization of Judicial Record of High Court

In an effort to push the e-Courts project to the next level digitalization of records is the most important step. Scanning & Digitization of judicial files of this Hon’ble Court was started in the year 2012. Thereafter, the work of Scanning of Administrative Record of this Court has also been completed. More than 15,000 sq feet valuable space has become available on account of weeding of 2,32,000 kgs – 232 tonnes / 117 truck load of papers. Now fresh filed cases and incremental data is being scanned on 32 High speed Scanners installed in filing section as well as in respective Judicial branches. All the scanned data has been pushed on Document Management Server of this Court in digitally signed PDF/A format, which is being at different stages like Central Copy Branch, e-inspection Cell, e-Notices, paperless courts, VPN connections, for issuing Docket and Bail orders etc.

Digitization of Judicial Record of Subordinate Courts

The project of Weeding, Scanning and Digitization in Subordinate Courts in the States of Punjab, Haryana and U.T. Chandigarh was inaugurated by Hon’ble the Chief Justice through Video Conferencing on 26.10.2018. The work of scanning and digitization is going on in Subordinate Courts of Punjab, Haryana and UT Chandigarh. As on date more than approx 10 Lakh cases comprising 6 Crore pages in the subordinate Courts in the State of Punjab, Haryana and UT Chandigarh has been scanned.

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Source : e-Committee, Supreme Court of India