Ushering a new era of e-Courts, the Chief Justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court, Justice Krishna Murari on Saturday launched the first Virtual Court at Faridabad through video conferencing.

This Virtual Court will deal with traffic challan cases of the entire State of Haryana. It is aimed at eliminating presence of litigant in the Court and adjudication of the case online.

Launching the project, the Chief Justice interacted with the District & Sessions Judge, Faridabad through video conferencing and laid emphasis on successful implementation of the project.

The project has been launched under the guidance of e-Committee of Supreme Court of India and the software has been developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC). Under this project, the cases received in the Virtual Court can be viewed by the Judge along with automatic computation of fines on the screen.

Once the summons is generated and accused gets information on email or SMS, accused can visit the Virtual Court website and search the Case by giving CNR Number of the case or Name of the Accused, or even by Driving License Number.

Once the accused pleads guilty online, fine amount will be displayed and the accused may proceed to pay the fine. On successful payment and realization of fine amount, the case may be automatically disposed of. When the accused does not plead guilty, such cases are remanded to the Regular Courts with the respective territorial jurisdiction. Virtual Court will reduce the burden on regular Courts. The entire process of disposal of will happen online in hours. Footfalls in the courts will be reduced considerably as accused need not visit the court for pleading guilty.

On this occasion, Chairman of the Computer Committee, Justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan as well as the Members of the Committee, Justice Surinder Gupta and Justice B.S. Walia, were also present, apart from other Judges of the High Court.