Live streaming of court proceedings has flipside: CJI

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Saturday said live streaming of court proceedings has flipside and judges need to be trained as every word they say is in the public realm in the age of social media.

Addressing the National Conference on Digitisation, Paperless Courts and e-initiatives at the Odisha Judicial Academy in Cuttack, CJI Chandrachud said courts across the country are likely to become paperless soon.

"We have been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for transcription of the proceedings of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. The transcript is provided to lawyers to clean up any errors," he said.

"AI is replete with possibilities. How do you expect a judge to digest the evidence in a statutory appeal in a record involving 15,000 pages? AI can prepare the entire record for you," he said, adding that many courts across the world were experimenting with AI.

However, CJI Chandrachud said AI has a flip side as well.

"For instance, it would be very difficult in allowing artificial intelligence to tell us what sentence to hand down following a conviction in a criminal case," he said.

The CJI said most high courts in the country are live-streaming proceedings.

"There are clips on YouTube of a Patna high court judge asking an IAS officer why he was not appropriately dressed, or a Gujarat HC judge asking a lawyer why she was not prepared with her case," he said.

In the same vein, he said, "Many funny things are going on in YouTube which need to be controlled, because this is serious stuff and what happens in the court is extremely serious."

The CJI said that live streaming has a flipside as well, and judges need to be trained as every word that they say in court is in the public realm in the age of social media.

"We realise this when we live stream constitution bench arguments," he said.

Very often citizens don't realise that what judges say in the course of a hearing is to open a dialogue, he added.

The CJI said the purpose of pitch-forking technology is not to place the justice system away from the people but to reach out to the common citizens of the country.

"The digital infrastructure we intend to create is firstly paperless courts. Secondly, virtual courts and Delhi has been leading in virtual courts, particularly in the area of traffic challans," he said.

The total outlay for phase 3, 2023-27, for the digitisation process is Rs 7,210 crore, he said.

"The outlay for phase 1 and phase 2 was just a fraction of phase 3, and look at the enormity of the fund which the Government of India is now providing," he said.

"When we pitched for this budget, not a single rupee was cut by the Union government," he added.