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India’s court websites are broken. It’s becoming a justice crisis

Indian courts debate AI, judicial reforms and pendency. But for most litigants, the biggest obstacle is far simpler: websites that crash and often get basic data wrong.

The Economist recently advised its readers to keep a glass of water and 1,000 mg of paracetamol within reach before visiting an Indian government website. The piece caused a fair amount of outrage in India. The publication must thank its stars that it is unlikely to get sued because then its owners would have had to navigate Indian court websites. The visa portal that The Economist was mocking is, by comparison, a spa.

Over five crore cases lie pending in India’s courts — the most written-about number in Indian law. There are also shelves of committee reports on ‘access to justice’. Legal scholars have commented on fairness, bias, poor judgments, and now the use of artificial intelligence (AI). This article will focus on access to data. Not the kind of data researchers need for policymaking or optimising court operations — that’s a different battle, for another day. The data in question here is more banal, but far more important. It is the basic information that a litigant or a lawyer needs to follow their case in a court.

The journey of a court website user

Let’s assume you are a litigant — a small company that has sued a large buyer for non-payment of bills, an employee who has sued their employer for unpaid salary or a senior citizen who is fighting the government in court for pension. Let’s assume you’ve been told that your case is likely to be heard tomorrow. What do you do the previous day?

Perhaps you want to find out where it stands. Is it listed? Who is the judge? Will it actually be taken up? What happened at the last hearing? You can call your lawyer to check, and chances are the average lawyer is also struggling with the same questions. The scramble begins around 6 pm, because that is when the next day’s cause list — the court’s daily schedule — is........

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