Bombay High Court adds data of 40,500 institutional entities to CIS database to ensure rapid service of notice

The Bombay High Court recently added information related to all institutional litigants across the country to its case information system (CIS), a database used by the High Court and district courts within the State of Maharashtra..The immediate advantage of the same is that any new case filing in Maharashtra can automatically fire an alert to the entity concerned anywhere in the country. “Once a respondent/ opposing entity is known, the nearest court (anywhere in the country) can be located. The service can be rapidly effected in digital form by transmitting the notice or a warrant and accompanying filing (soft copy) to the court nearest to the respondent entity,” the circular clarified..In a circular issued by the High Court on August 19, 2023, the Registrar General said that the High Court was the first and only one to have achieved this so far..The codified information includes basic information of roughly 40,500 entities across the country which are: State Government; Central Government; corporations of both; government companies; public sector banks;insurance companies; cooperative sugar factories and cotton mills;agricultural produce market committees; urban and rural local bodies;national, scheduled, non-scheduled, cooperative banks; universities, colleges;all police stations in Maharashtra; all prisons in India; private and public limited companies..The High Court has also developed its own software independently for digitizing case records. Another circular issued on August 19 gives out details of the software. ‘BHC Interact’ is a portal for staff, lawyers and judges to access files.‘BHC Connect’ digitally links the case records of the district and taluka courts with the High Court.‘BHC Ingestion’ allows district and taluka courts to send digitized records to High Court if and when called upon. The retrieved record is then automatically linked with the high court case for viewing by the High Court judge. This could eliminate the need to replicate the entire district or taluka court records..The High Court has also issued an update about the neutral citation project which was launched by the Court earlier for all its benches in March 2023. In addition to the citation itself, the judgements and orders also feature OR codes and digital signatures. A QR code will help ay user to directly access the authenticated judgement or order from any electronic device which can scan the code. This three-in-one facility (Neutral citation, QR code, digital signature) is unique to Bombay High Court judgments and orders. .Further, in a circular issued on August 19, the High Court said that it has managed to translate a total of 114 judgments from English to Marathi using the Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Translation Facility..[Read High Court circulars]