eCourts Mission Mode Project, Phase III (2023-2027)

The eCourts Mission Mode Project grew out of the National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of ICT in the Indian Judiciary (2005), and the Supreme Court's e-Committee, set up in 2004, oversees it. The project is a pan-India initiative monitored and funded by the Department of Justice.¹ According to the Phase III Vision document, Phase I had a budget of Rs 639.411 crore and Phase II Rs 1,670 crore, and together they built computerised courts, a case information system, the National Judicial Data Grid and video-conferencing capacity.¹ The Chief Justice approved the Phase II policy and action plan on 8 January 2014 and the government sanctioned the project on 4 August 2015.¹⁰ At the e-Committee's National Conference in April 2026, Justice J.K. Maheshwari said Phases I and II had established a digital infrastructure for 18,700 courts.²

In June 2020 the e-Committee formed a sub-committee of experts from Agami, DAKSH and the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy to envision Phase III. The resulting "Digital Courts: Vision & Roadmap" is dated 26 November 2022 and was published on the e-Committee's website on 20 April 2023.¹⁹ The Union Cabinet approved Phase III in 2023 with an outlay reported at about Rs 7,210 crore.⁴ The sources reviewed did not give the date of the Cabinet decision, so it is not recorded here.

The Vision document describes a judicial system that is "natively digital" and that "does not merely digitise paper-based processes" but transforms them for a digital environment. It sets three key goals: relevant hardware (connectivity, power, computers, printers and scanners, with solar power expanded beyond the 5 per cent of court complexes covered in Phase II); a data governance framework balancing open courts with privacy and security, which it says will be "forward-looking to include the use of artificial intelligence"; and a core digital infrastructure.¹

The core infrastructure includes Judicial Trustworthy Digital Repositories as an authoritative case registry built on the unique case number record (CNR); a comprehensive repository of case law; machine-readable and secure documents using OCR, smart forms, digital signatures and blockchain; intelligent scheduling; and an interoperable criminal justice system linking police, prisons, legal aid and courts. On top of these sit services such as digital case management, e-filing, courtroom streaming and transcription, online service of summons, and virtual courts.¹

The document recommends an ecosystem approach. Rather than building every solution itself, the judiciary would provide open APIs and standards, set certifications as guardrails, and let High Courts, lawyers, civil society and companies build services. Institutionally it proposes a Digital Courts Technology Office that would become a National Judicial Technology Council, and technology offices in High Courts. It recommends a staggered, piloted geographical rollout and notes that independent services such as transcription can be implemented on a stand-alone basis.¹

The Union Cabinet approved Phase III in 2023 with a budget reported at about Rs 7,210 crore.⁴ In April 2026 the Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kant, described Phase III as carrying "an outlay of over INR 7,200 crore", and the Secretary (Justice) described the project as running from 2023 to 2027, while adding that the Department of Justice "proposes to extend the e-Courts Phase III Project, if required".²

The AI-specific allocation is small. SPMRF reports about Rs 53.57 crore for AI under Phase III,⁶ and Bar & Bench reported in February 2025 that the Law Ministry had told Parliament that Rs 54 crore was allocated for AI adoption in the judiciary, and that a sub-committee of six High Court judges had been formed on data protection and privacy concerns.⁷

Implementation runs through the Department of Justice, the e-Committee (chaired by Justice Vikram Nath as of April 2026) and Central Project Coordinators and ICT or IT and AI committees in the High Courts. The e-Committee's conference report lists several High Courts with "Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence" committees, for example the Delhi and Orissa High Courts.²

The sources reviewed show AI as one strand among several in Phase III. The Vision document assigns it three roles. First, a scheduling system "must intelligently recommend (and not decide) appropriate schedules by using AI", taking account of judges' and lawyers' calendars, caseload, case type and data from earlier cases. Second, it asks for "algorithmic transparency" so that the judiciary's AI algorithms and design models are available for periodic technical audits. Third, it treats OCR and machine-readable documents, digital signatures and blockchain as the data foundation for later analytics, and lists transcription and the SUVAS translation tool among the enabling infrastructure.¹

Speaking in April 2026, the Secretary (Justice) said the programme "deploys significant budgetary resources to integrate emerging technologies such as cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain", and suggested process improvements including smart scheduling by case type, AI defect detection, online oaths, integration of video-conference hearings with normal proceedings and virtual courts for petty offences.²

High Court examples listed in the e-Committee's April 2026 report include an AI-powered chatbot in use at the Calcutta High Court since 2024, an on-premise AI English-to-Assamese legal translation platform in the Gauhati High Court table, integration of the national SUVAS platform at the Himachal Pradesh High Court, and Adalat AI speech-to-text tools in other High Courts.² The Kerala High Court, one of the most active, made Adalat.AI mandatory for recording witness depositions from 1 November 2025 and built AI features into its in-house paperless district system.⁸ These tools are governed not by Phase III itself but by court policies such as Kerala's and by the Supreme Court's draft regulations.

The most detailed official account is the e-Committee's report on its National Conference on Judicial Process Re-Engineering and Digital Transformation, held at the Supreme Court on 11 and 12 April 2026. At that event the Chief Justice released a Biennial Report on Phase III and launched four initiatives: the eCourts Single Sign-On portal, eCourts Services Mobile App 4.0, the integration of eCourts with ePrisons, and electronic delivery of summons through email.² The Chief Justice cited more than 2,300 e-Sewa Kendras nationwide, and the Secretary (Justice) reported ICT systems in thousands of courtrooms, solar facilities, virtual courts handling crores of cases, e-filing enhancements and long-term digital preservation.²

Other data points include the e-Committee's May 2026 newsletter, which records that the video-conferencing rules had been implemented in the High Courts and district courts of all 28 reporting jurisdictions as of 31 May 2026,³ and a Delhi High Court judgment of 22 April 2024, in which the High Court's Registrar General reported that 724 scanners had been procured in e-Courts Phase III and supplied to district courts for digitising record rooms, and that a tender for digitising about 50 crore pages was in process.⁵

The Secretary (Justice) acknowledged "the massive scale of digitization, rural connectivity issues, and software fragmentation across High Courts", and said uniform implementation needs coordinated effort and sustained investment.² Justice Maheshwari stressed that the allocated budget "must be utilized in a planned manner". Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Nath both stressed that technology alone is insufficient and that processes must be re-engineered so that digitisation does not merely replicate paper systems in digital form.²

On AI, several speakers urged caution. Justice Rajesh Bindal raised concerns about accuracy, reliability and data security, said AI should remain an aid and not a substitute for judicial reasoning, and flagged the confidentiality risks of open-source platforms. Minister of State Jitin Prasada described AI as an enabler for reducing pendency but said it should not substitute for human judgment, and said that while promoting AI innovation the government is taking care to avoid over-regulation.² The Vision document itself warns that Phase III should not be only a digitisation of paper and lays out risks of exclusion, calling for in-built translation tools, assisted access and attention to "last mile" delivery.¹ The sources reviewed contained no independent audit of Phase III spending.

As of 15 October 2026 Phase III is in the later part of its 2023-2027 timetable. A Biennial Report was released on 11 April 2026, but the sources reviewed did not include its text, a published Phase III sanction order, or audited spending figures. The Department of Justice has said that it may propose an extension if required.² Phase III is the infrastructure layer on which AI use by courts depends, and the Supreme Court's draft Regulations for Use of AI in Courts, 2026 would govern the AI tools deployed on it once adopted.¹¹