The High Court on Wednesday inquired about the progress in the establishment of e-judiciary in the country.

The court directed the government to submit a report in this regard in two months.

The HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman delivered the order after hearing on a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer Farhad Uddin Ahmed Bhuiyan in January 2020 seeking its directives on this subject.

Besides, the HC bench fixed October 20 for further hearing before passing order on the petition.

On December 11, 2019, Advocate Farhad Uddin filed a writ petition seeking directions to set up e-judiciary and e-court rooms in all courts of the country. After a preliminary hearing of the writ petition, the High Court issued a rule on January 19, 2020 and sought information on the action taken by the government. The rule seeks to know why the government will not be instructed to take all possible steps to introduce e-judiciary in all courtrooms of the country. Nine defendants, including the law secretary, were asked to respond to the rule within 30 days.

But the writ petitioner brought the matter to the notice of the court as he did not get any reply from the government. On June 10, 2020 the court directed the government to inform the matter by July 14 of the year.

However, due to the coronavirus situation, the matter was not heard in the court at that time due to limited jurisdiction. Following this, the same lawyer brought the matter to the notice of the court this year.

To put things into context, the Ministry of Law has taken up e-Judiciary projects for speedy disposal of cases, digitization of judiciary, bringing all courts of the country under virtual system, conducting judicial process through video conferencing while keeping prisoners in jails, setting up e-court rooms across the country.

 It is leart that Tk 2878 crore has been allocated for the five-year project from June 2020 to June 2024.