new delhi former central information commissioner shailesh gandhi has called for making virtual hearing a permanent feature of the judicial system stating that the achievements of a supreme court ecommittee which has been around since 2005 have been inadequatehe has made this suggestion in his submission to justice dy chandrachud the chairperson of the sc ecommittee saying the draft report placed by the committee in public domain lacks any real evaluation of the effectiveness of the earlier efforts and recommendationsgandhi who had set in motion paperless working in the central information commission a decade back said the supreme court ecommittee has been around since 2005 and it appears its real achievements are inadequateciting the findings of the committee gandhi said the report mentions that a total of rs 639411 crore plus rs 1670 crore have been spent implementing information and communication technology based systems in courtsif i presume an expenditure of 309411 crore for software and consultancy it would mean rs 2000 crore for hardware assuming about 20000 courts this would mean an average expenditure of about rs10 lacs per court for hardware this should be more than adequate yet most courts did not function effectively during the pandemic using virtual hearings he saidhe said as against an increase of four lakh pending cases before courts between 200519 just last one year has seen an addition of 75 lakh cases to the pendencygandhi said the committee mentions setting up of some virtual courts whereas all courts should be effective virtual courtsin fact i would submit that all courts should be prepared and mandated to allow lawyers and litigants to appear virtually or physically without any specific need to inform anyone or take permissions he saidthe former information commissioner said to achieve this there is no requirement for any serious training but just ability to use a keyboard which is a common skill available to any literate person and at best a twohour familiarisation video should be adequatethe report acknowledges algorithmic generation of cause lists and lawyer queuing using ecourts data can increase both the efficiency and predictability of case timelines he saidthis should be mandatory and an intervention to change the listing should be permitted only to the judges to an extent of less than five per centmany other desirable features are mentioned in the report such as interoperable criminal justice system and a lot of sophistication these could be added later on the important thing is to start with hybrid courts he saidit should be ensured ecommittees recommendations and specifications are accepted in all the states efiling made compulsory prospectively all courts must have the required hardware and offer physical or virtual hearings gandhi recommendedthere may be some cases which require physical presence by the court specifically following the cause list generated by a computer program with a maximum override of only five per cent he added