Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud has urged High Courts to embrace technology and continue using hybrid hearings beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. He emphasized that judges must not burden lawyers due to their uneasiness with technology and instead retrain themselves. The CJI also implored Chief Justices to maintain infrastructure for virtual hearings and cited the need for a centralized cloud infrastructure to control the interface of live streaming with social media. The CJI expressed his vision for paperless and virtual courts, but cautioned that judges' discretion would still be necessary for aspects such as sentencing. He acknowledged the possibilities of AI tools but emphasized that judicial discretion must still be exercised. The CJI was speaking at the National Conference on Digitisation in Odisha, where he also inaugurated a neutral citation system.
TAGS: Chief Justice of India technology litigants hybrid hearings COVID-19 pandemic virtual appearances High Courts infrastructure PILs digitization neutral citation system e-filing AI tools judicial discretion paperless courts live-streaming social media cloud infrastructure hardware.
