Jammu and Kashmir High Court has constituted a five-member panel to examine the issues related to poor e-connectivity of the courts.
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation on its own motion, a division bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Sanjay Dhar constituted the committee comprising Shaleen Kabra, Home Secretary; Shahzad Azeem, Registrar (IT), J&K High Court; Abhay Kumar, SIO NIC, J&K High Court; Sanjeev Tyagi, nodal officer, BSNL and Director, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), Jammu or an expert to be nominated by him from NIELIT to examine the issues and make recommendations.
The Court constituted the committee after hearing the Home Commissioner who was present via video conferencing.
The Home Commissioner pointed out that that there could be many reasons for the poor e-connectivity of the courts.
Amongst the reasons, he said, the difficulties in the e-connectivity were lease line issues; need of enhancement of lease line bandwidth; optimal utilization of the software; distribution of bandwidth amongst different users which has not been optimally effected and possible misuse of the available bandwidth.
He also made a suggestion that an audit needs to be first undertaken of the facilities which were in existence and which were required to be urgently added.
After hearing the Home Commissioner, the Court constituted the panel asking it to examine the issues and make recommendations.
The Court asked the panel to undertake a proper audit of the facilities before making their report and the meetings of the Committee may be held on video conference.
“All information as may be needed for effective assessment by the members of the Committee shall be made available by Shabir Malik, CPC J&K High Court and Umesh Sharma, Civil Judge (Senior Division), Leave Reserve, High Court of J&K,” the Court said.
It directed that the reports of the panel shall at the first instance be placed before the Chairperson of IT Committee of the High Court for his consideration.
The Court asked Shahzad Azeem, Registrar (IT) to place the observations of the Chairperson, IT Committee along with the final report before the Court on the next date of hearing.
“Members of the Committee shall remain present in the Court through video conferencing on the next date as well,” the Court said, listing the plea for further consideration on July 23.