Justice Singh: In 1994, when we started our own law firm, one of the clients came to us and said he did not have money, but he could give us a computer. We took the computer and installed it in our chamber. I think it was an IBM PC XT. This was the first computer in any lawyer’s chamber at Tis Hazari courts. Of course, we also installed the first air conditioner (AC) in our chamber.
Back then, people believed that a computer cannot function without an AC. The computer helped us do our job more efficiently and the stenographer was able to give us quick output. We were quite happy with its performance.
When I joined the judiciary in 2000, the district judiciary was not computerised at all and staff members were still using old, rickety typewriters. So, I wrote to the then Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, bringing this to his notice.
I requested that the district courts should be computerised and should have their own website. I was directed by the secretariat of the Chief Justice to submit my suggestions to Justice Madan B Lokur, who was then a judge of the Delhi High Court and was in charge of computerisation.
I met him and I shared my suggestions. From that day onwards, under Justice Lokur’s guidance, we were able to computerise all courts in Delhi.
In 2013, I got an opportunity to work with the eCommittee of the Supreme Court. This eCommittee was looking after computerisation of all the courts in India. Our target was to computerise about 14,000 courts in the country and we were able to achieve that in a time-bound manner.
Source: Barandbench
