Three hours of silence: The human cost of a court website that won't load

Today, I refreshed the Bombay High Court's website for the eleventh time. As an advocate practicing in this court, all I wanted was to check the display board and see a few case details about my upcoming matter.

It may seem like a trivial matter, but for those of us who practice here every day, it is not a minor issue at all, considering all advocates use the Bombay High Court’s website on a daily basis.

The display board is one of the most essential features on the Bombay High Court's website. It tells us which matter is going on in various courts. It helps lawyers examine at what stage the proceedings of different courts have reached or, in most cases, it helps interns to update their seniors about the status of the matter. Now frankly speaking for advocates who are physically present in the court premises, it might not be that big of an issue. But for a large number of lawyers who are not present in the court premises at that moment and perhaps attending another matter elsewhere, or simply working from their chambers, the online display board is often the only way to track what is happening inside the courtroom in real time. It is not a convenience; it is a major necessity.

Even on days when the website is technically "working," the display board frequently glitches. It is not perfectly updated every second and usually freezes on a case number that was disposed of long ago. This creates panic, leaving lawyers refreshing the page again and again, the way I did today, hoping that the next refresh will finally show something accurate.

This is not a one-time inconvenience. It is a frequently recurring issue and anyone who spends time in the corridors of the Bombay High Court will tell you the same thing. While talking to most of my colleagues, I hear the same complaints about the website and specifically about the display board not functioning properly. It has become such a familiar frustration that lawyers have stopped being surprised by it. Now this, in itself, should be a matter of concern for the authorities, because a problem that is no longer surprising is a problem that has been allowed to continue for far too long.

To summarise this, a smoothly functioning high court website is not an extra facility that lawyers are demanding as a luxury. It is a basic requirement for the court to function the way it is meant to. Many advocates have two, three, or even more matters listed on the same day, often before different courtrooms. Keeping track of all of them and making sure to attend all the proceedings without a reliable display board is not just difficult, it directly affects whether a lawyer can be present for a matter when it is called, or whether it gets missed altogether. Now when this happens, it is not only the lawyer who is inconvenienced but also the litigant whose case gets adjourned, or heard without proper representation.

The fix here does not require reinventing anything. In fact, it simply requires the concerned authorities to treat this as the priority it actually is, rather than a minor technical inconvenience to be tolerated. Some solutions could be regular monitoring of server load, a dedicated and accountable tech team for the display board specifically and a transparent channel where lawyers can report glitches daily. It is very evident that the courts elsewhere have managed to run a stable e-courts system. There is absolutely no reason the Bombay High Court should not be able to do the same.

This is by no means about pointing fingers at anyone. It is about a basic tool that the legal fraternity heavily relies upon every single working day. Fixing it will not solve every problem the judiciary faces, but it is a small, concrete step that will make a real difference to how smoothly justice moves through this court. It is time the concerned authorities looked into it - not eventually - but now.

Krishna Beena Rohit Chheda is an advocate practicing before the Bombay High Court.