The vote on account presented by the union government on Thursday allocates Rs 1,500 crore for the ambitious phase III of the e-courts project that aims to bring about maximum ease of justice by moving towards digital, online and paperless courts.
The phase III of e-courts, which was approved by the union government as a central sector scheme in September 2023, has a total outlay of Rs 7,210 crore. The project was allocated Rs 825 crore in the previous fiscal.
An amount of Rs 48 crore has been allocated for the project Designing Innovative Solutions for Holistic Access to Justice in INDIA (DISHA). The same amount was allocated in the previous fiscal. DISHA is an umbrella scheme of the Union Ministry of Law and Justice meant for improving access to justice.
The total allocation under the head National Mission for Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms, which includes the e-courts project and DISHA, is Rs 1,548 crore.
There has been a dip though in the budget for improving infrastructure facilities for judiciary from Rs 1,051 crore in 2023-24 to Rs 998 crore for the coming fiscal. The allocation for Gram Nyalayas has been reduced from Rs 10 crore to Rs 2 crore.
The allocation for the Supreme Court of India has gone down to Rs 485.49 crore from the revised allocation of Rs 517.28 crore in 2023-24. This amount provides for administrative and other expenditure of the Supreme Court. This includes the provision for salaries and travel expenses in respect of the Chief Justice of India and other judges, staff and officers of the Supreme Court Registry, the departmental canteen, charges for professional service towards personnel deployed for security and expenditure on establishment related needs including stationery, office equipment, security equipment, computer and telecom equipment, maintenance of CCTV and printing of annual report of the Supreme Court.
Under the head Administration of Justice, an allocation of Rs 456.54 crore, almost the same as the Rs 459.28 crore allocated in 2023-24, has been made.
